GEORGE  WASHINGTON 

From  the  portrait  by  Stuart. 

u  The  basis  of  our  political  systems  is  the  right  of  the  people  to  make 
and  to  alter  their  constitutions  of  government."  —  From  the  FARE 
WELL  ADDRESS. 


THE  STORY 

OF 

AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY 

POLITICAL  AND   INDUSTRIAL 


WILLIS   MASON   WEST 

Sometime  Professor  of  History  in  the  University  of  Minne 
sota  ;    Author  of   The  American   People,  American 
History  and   Government,    The    War  and 
the  New  Age,   Modern   Progress 


BOSTON 
SMALL,   MAYNARD   &   COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 


COPYRIGHT,   1922 
BY  WILLIS  MASON   WEST 


J.  8,  Cushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass..  U.S.A. 


1  Who  cometh  over  the  hills, 
Her  garments  with  morning  sweet, 
The  dance  of  a  thousand  rills 
Making  music  before  her  feet  ? 
Her  presence  freshens  the  air ; 
Sunshine  steals  light  from  her  face ; 
The  leaden  footstep  of  Care 
Leaps  to  the  tune  of  her  pace. 
Fairness  of  all  that  is  fair, 
Grace  at  the  heart  of  all  grace, 
Sweetener  of  hut  and  of  hall, 
Bringer  of  life  out  of  naught, 
FREEDOM,  O  fairest  of  all 
The  daughters  of  Time  and  Thought ! 


580189 


FOREWORD 

I  TRY  here  to  present  in  one  volume  a  readable  story  of 
American  history  with  particular  reference  to  the  constant 
struggle  for  democracy  in  society,  politics,  and  industry.  So 
compact  a  treatment  ought  not  .to  be  encumbered  with  bris 
tling  footnotes  or  bibliographies ;  and  so  the  general  accu 
racy  of  the  treatment  will  have  to  be  vouched  for  by  the 
standing  of  my  text-books  in  the  same  field,  —  The  Ameri 
can  People  and  American  History  and  Government. 

The  older  historians  used  to  close  their  narratives  at  a 
date  somewhat  remote  from  that  of  their  own  labors,  - 
"  pulling  up  abruptly  "  (in  the  words  of  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells) 
as  they  approached  contemporary  history  "  as  though  they 
had  suddenly  come  upon  something  indelicate."  While  I 
have  been  toiling  over  the  concluding  chapters  of  this  vol 
ume,  my  respect  for  that  judicious  procedure  has  been  un 
expectedly  enhanced.  On  so  recent  a  period  as  the  years 
since  the  World  War  the  most  impartial  conclusions  are  at 
the  mercy  of  fresh  evidence  daily  to  be  expected.  I  can 
only  trust  that  the  reader  will  not  disagree  with  my  troubled 
decision  that  to  attempt  that  difficult  period  in  such  a  work 
as  this  was  worth  while,  even  at  the  possible  cost  of  serious 
imperfections. 

WILLIS  MASON  WEST 

WINDAGO  FARM 

January  1,  1922 


CONTENTS 

PART  I  — THE  ENGLISH  IN  AMERICA,   TO   1660 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.     WHAT  THE  ENGLISH  FOUND 1 

Geographical  influences ;  the  natives ;  Spain  in  America ;  France 
and  her  failure. 

II.     VIRGINIA  AND  MARYLAND  TO  1660    ....!..  14 

III.  NEW  ENGLAND  AND  THE  PILGRIMS    .......  47 

IV.  MASSACHUSETTS   BAY       .........  62 

V.     OTHER  NEW  ENGLAND  COLONIES     .......  98 

Rhode  Island  (religious  freedom) ;  Connecticut  (political  democ 
racy)  ;  the  New  England  Confederation. 


PART  II  —  COLONIAL  AMERICA  (1660-1763) 

VI.     THE  STRUGGLE  TO  SAVE  SELF-GOVERNMENT  (1660-1690)  .         .     107 

VII.     "COLONIAL  AMERICANS"  FROM  1690  TO  1763          .         .  .         .133 

VIII.     COLONIAL   LIFE  145 


PART  III  —  SEPARATION   FROM   ENGLAND    (1763-1783) 

IX.    THE  CAUSES 168 

How  the  French  Wars  prepared  the  way ;  causes  inherent  in  Ameri 
can  development ;   relation  of  the  struggle  to  English  history ;  the 
social  uprising  in  America. 
X.     TEN  YEARS  OF  AGITATION,  1765-1774 189 

XI.     THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION   ........     206 

From  colonies  to  commonwealths;  the  new  state  constitutions; 
Congress  and  the  war;    the  peace  treaty. 


PART  IV  — THE  MAKING  OF  THE  SECOND   "WEST" 

XII.     THE  SOUTHWEST:    SELF-DEVELOPED          ......     237 

XIII.     THE  NORTHWEST:   A  NATIONAL  DOMAIN 249 


Vlll 


CONTENTS 


PART  V  — THE   CONSTITUTION  AND  THE  FEDERALISTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XIV.     THE  "LEAGUE  OF  FRIENDSHIP" 260 

The  "Critical  Period,"  1783-1788;  the  evils,  and  their  source 
in  the  Articles  of  Confederation. 

XV.     THE  FEDERAL  CONVENTION  AND  THE  CONSTITUTION        .         .     272 

XVI.     FEDERALIST  ORGANIZATION 300 

Making  the  Constitution  move ;   Hamilton's  financial  policy. 

XVII.     DECLINE  OF  THE  FEDERALISTS 316 

Rise  of  political  parties;  foreign  relations,  1795-1800; 
domestic  troubles,  1797-1800  (Alien  and  Sedition  laws  and 
Kentucky  Resolutions) ;  expiring  Federalism. 


PART  VI  —  JEFFERSONIAN   REPUBLICANISM,    1800-1830 

XVIII.     AMERICA  IN  1800        . 

XIX.     THE  "REVOLUTION  OF  1800"    . 


XX.     TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION 

Louisiana    Purchase;      West    Florida; 
Expedition. 

XXI.     THE  WAR  OF  1812 


Lewis    and     Clark 


337 
353 
370 

380 


PART   VII  — A   NEW   AMERICANISM,    1815-1830 

XXII.     A  THIRD  "WEST" 393 

Immigration ;   new  lands  and  the   steamboat ;    internal    im 
provements  ;  rapid  growth. 

XXIII.  FOREIGN  RELATIONS,   1815-1830 405 

XXIV.  NATIONALISM  AND  REACTION 411 

Protective  tariffs ;   extension  of  Federal  power  by  the  courts ; 
the  Missouri  Compromise ;  rise  of  new  political  parties. 


PART  VIII  — A   NEW   DEMOCRACY,    1830-1850 

XXV.     THE  AMERICA  OF  1830 421 

The  three  sections  (the  West  and  optimistic  democracy) ;  the 
awakening  of  labor,  1825-1837;  intellectual  and  social 
progress. 

XXVI.     THE  "REVOLUTION  OF  1828" 453 

XXVII.     THE  "REIGN"  OF  ANDREW  JACKSON,  1829-1841      .         .         .462 


CONTENTS 


IX 


CHAPTER 

XXVIII. 

XXIX. 
XXX. 

XXXI. 
XXXII. 


PART  IX  — SLAVERY 

SLAVERY  TO  1844       ...... 

SLAVERY  AND  EXPANSION    ..... 

THE  STRUGGLE  TO  CONTROL  THE  NEW  TERRITORY 
THE  BREAKDOWN  OF  COMPROMISE     .         . 

ON  THE  EVE   OF  THE  FlNAL  STRUGGLE 

America  in  1860 ;  the  political  campaign  of  1860. 


PAGE 

479 
490 
496 
503 
516 


PART  X  —  NATIONALISM   VICTORIOUS,    1860-1876 

XXXIII.  THE  CALL  TO  ARMS 526 

XXXIV.  THE  CIVIL  WAR 534 

Campaigns ;  finances ;  slavery  abolished ;   European  relations. 

XXXV.     RECONSTRUCTION        .         .         .         .         .  .         .         .  555 

XXXVI.     THE  CLOSE  OF  AN  ERA 567 

PART   XI  —  A  BUSINESS   AGE,    1876-1914 

XXXVII.     NATIONAL  GROWTH 578 

XXXVIII.     THE  POLITICAL  STORY,  1876-1896 591 

Civil  service  and  the  tariff. 

XXXIX.     ANOTHER  PHASE  OF  THE  POLITICAL  STORY       ....     603 
Greenbacks  and  free  silver. 

XL.     AMERICA  A  WORLD  POWER 610 

The  war  with  Spain  and  the  aftermath. 

XLI.     THE  PEOPLE  vs.  PRIVILEGE 625 

Railroads  (the  Grangers);  "big  business";  public  service 
corporations. 

XLII.     FORWARD-LOOKING  MOVEMENTS 646 

The  labor  movement ;  the  farmer  movement ;  socialists  and 
single  taxers;  the  "progressive"  movement  in  politics; 
Woodrow  Wilson's  first  administration. 

PART   XII  — THE    WORLD    WAR 

XLIII.     How  THE  WAR  CAME 684 

The  heaped  materials;  the  Balkan  fuse;  and  the  hand  to 
light  the  fuse. 

XLIV.     AMERICA  AND  THE  WAR 703 

XLV.     THE  PEACE  CONGRESS  AND  THE  PROPOSED  WORLD  LEAGUE     .  731 

XLVI.     THE  NEW  AGE 748 

APPENDIX  :     THE  FEDERAL  CONSTITUTION        ....  1 

INDEX                                                                   ....  15 


ILLUSTRATIONS  AND  MAPS 

1.  George  Washington  ........         Frontispiece 

PAGE 

2.  Lines  of  equal  temperature  in  America  and  Europe    .....  2 

3.  An  Algonkin  village  (from  Beverly's  Virginia,  1701)      ....  5 

4.  Columbus  at  the  court  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella  (Brozik)     ...  8 

5.  Champlain's  fight  with  the  Iroquois  (from  Champlain's  Les  Voyages)     .  10 

6.  French  posts  and  Indian  portages.      Colored    ....         facing  10 

7.  Queen  Elizabeth  knighting  Francis  Drake  (from  Gilbert's  drawing)       .  15 

8.  Facsimile  of  the  title  page  of  Hakluyt's  Voyages     .....  18 

9.  Virginia  in  1606-1608 23 

10.  Facsimile  of  the  London  Company's  Proclamation  of  the  Virginia  Lottery, 

1615 25 

11.  Captain  John  Smith  (from  Smith's  Generall  Historic)      ....  28 

12.  The  twro  possible  Virginias  of  1609  (the  "west  and  northwest"  clause)       .  29 

13.  Facsimile  of  the  first  page  of  King  James'  C ounterblaste  to  Tobacco          .  35 

14.  Facsimile  of  Baltimore's  instructions  to  the  first  Maryland  governor 

regarding  Protestants  ..........  45 

15.  Virginia  and  New  England  in  1620    ........  48 

16.  Facsimile  of  the  Mayflower  Compact.,  as  given  in  the  Bradford  manu 

script    53 

17.  Pilgrims  going  to  meeting  (Boughton)     .......  56 

18.  Governor  Edward  Winslow  (from  the  portrait  in  Pilgrim  Hall)      .         .  60 

19.  "Marks"  of  Indian  chieftains  to  a  covenant  with  Massachusetts  in  1644 

(Massachusetts  State  Archives) 70 

20.  The  Cradock  House  at  Medford 71 

21.  Kettle  (said  to  be  first  iron  casting  in  America ;  Lynn  Library)  .         .         .  72 

22.  John  Cotton  (Drake's  History  and  Antiquities  of  Boston)    ....  79 

23.  Colonial  fireplace  and  utensils           ........  84 

24.  Facsimile  from  the  "  Body  of  Liberties  "    .......  85 

25.  New  England  in  1640 99 

26.  Old  grist  mill  (1645)  at  New  London,  Connecticut 103 

27.  English  America,  1660-1690.     Colored              facing  107 

28.  Pine  Tree  Shilling  (Massachusetts  Historical  Society  Collections)  .         .  113 

29.  Boston's  summons  to  Andros  (Massachusetts  Archives)          .         .         .117 

30.  William  Penn  at  twenty-two  (Lely) 129 

31.  The  Appalachian  "Fall  Line" 134 

32.  A  page  from  the  earliest  known  edition  of  the  New  England  Primer       .  154 


ILLUSTRATIONS    AND    MAPS  xi 

PAGE 

33.  A  page  from  the  Paisley  edition  of  same  ("evening  prayer")      .         .         .     155 

34.  Advertisement  for  a  runaway  white  "servant"    (Boston  News  Letter, 

Sept.  18,   1755) 158 

35.  The  Baltic   (American-built   English   schooner,    1765.     Water  color   in 

Essex  Institute) 160 

36.  An  American  "deep-sea-going"  ship 161 

37.  Massachusetts  paper  money  of  1690 162 

38.  Mount  Vernon  (from  a  photograph)      .         .         .         .         .         .         .164 

39.  Lexington  Green  (from  a  photograph)      .         .         .         .          .         .         .165 

40.  Boone's  Fort 166 

41.  Colonial  cartoon  —  reception  of  a  bishop  in  New  England     .         .         .177 

42.  Handbill  of  New  York  Sons  of  Liberty  —  "We  Dare"     .         .         .         .191 

43.  Facsimile  of  Pennsylvania  Journal's  announcement  of  suspension  due  to 

Stamp  Act 192 

44.  Paul  Revere's  engraving  of  the  landing  of  British  regiments       .         .         .194 

45.  The  Concord  Minute  Man  (French) 207 

46.  The  Concord  Fight  (Simmons  in  Boston  State  House)     .         .         .         .208 

47.  The  Washington  Elm  at  Cambridge  (photo) 209 

48.  Facsimile   of  the  first  of  Jefferson's  draft  of  the  Declaration  of  Inde 

pendence       ............  216 

49.  A  continental  bill  (Massachusetts  Historical  Society)        ....  227 

50.  Boundaries  proposed  by  France  in  1782.     Colored          .         .        facing  233 

51.  Crossed  swords,  American  and  English  (Massachusetts  Historical  Society)  235 

52.  The  United  States  in  1783 ;  nominal  and  actual  territory.    Colored  facing  237 

53.  Western  settlement,   1769-1784 239 

54.  A  "Boone  tree" 242 

55.  Daniel  Boone  at  eighty-five  (the  Harding  portrait)          ....  243 

56.  The  United  States  in  1783.     State  claims  and  cessions.     Colored    facing  251 

57.  Manasseh  Cutler .         .250 

58.  An  old  Ohio  mill 257 

59.  Frontier  lines,  1774,  1790,  and  1820.     Colored         .         .         .        facing  258 

60.  George  Washington  (Stuart) 275 

61.  Benjamin  Franklin  (Duplessis) 278 

62.  "Eighth  Federal  pillar  reared"  (Boston  Chronicle,  June  12,  1788)    .  297 

63.  John  Adams  (Stuart) 302 

64.  Harvard  in  1770  (Paul  Revere's  engraving) 315 

65.  Alexander  Hamilton  (Trumbull) 335 

66.  Physical  map  of  the  United  States 340 

67.  California  redwoods 341 

68.  Sectional  elevation  of  the  United  States  (after  Draper)     .         .         .         .342 

69.  Movement  of  centers  of  population  and  of  manufactures      .         .         .  343 

70.  An  early  cotton  gin  ..........  345 

71.  Farm  tools  in  1800 346 

72.  Modern  plowing 347 

73.  A  colonial  spinning  wheel 352 


xii  ILLUSTRATIONS    AND    MAPS 

PAGE 

74.  A  Conestoga  wagon         ..........  367 

75.  Cincinnati  in  1810  (after  Howe) 368 

76.  United  States  growth  from  1800  to  1853.     Colored     .         .        facing  371 
77.'  "Louisiana"  and  "West  Florida"  (three  maps,  1756-1819)           .         .  376 

78.  Meriwether  Lewis  in  hunting  costume    .......  378 

79.  Explorations  in  Louisiana  Territory.     Colored       .         .         .        facing  379 

80.  Photographic  reproduction  of  part  of  the  Boston  Centinel  for  November  9, 

1814,  showing  secession  tendencies     .......  391 

81.  The  National  Road 396 

82.  Distribution  of  population  in  1820 403 

83.  Thomas  Jefferson   (Stuart)    .                                    408 

84.  Chicago    ("Fort  Dearborn")    in    1831:     based    on     a     contemporary 

drawing      ............  423 

85.  Time  card  showing  the  long  factory  day  in  1848   .....  441 

86.  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  (the  Concord  statue  by  French)  ....  445 

87.  The  "DeWitt  Clinton"  locomotive 451 

88.  Jefferson's  home,  Monticello  .........  454 

89.  The  birthplace  of  Abraham  Lincoln 455 

90.  A  Jackson  cartoon  —  "Clar  de  Kitchen"    ......  457 

91.  The  presidential  election  of  1828     .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .  463 

92.  Test  vote  on  the  Compromise  of  1850 500 

93.  An  antislavery  handbill  of  1851 504 

94.  Test  vote  on  the  Kansas-Nebraska  Bill 507 

95.  Railroad  construction  from  1830  to  1860.     Colored          .         .        facing  516 

96.  Harvesting  in  1831 518 

97.  Harvesting  to-day .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .519 

98.  Union  and  Confederacy  in  1862 '    .         .  532 

99.  Scene  of  the  Civil  War 536 

100.  Union  and  Confederacy  after  Gettysburg      ......  537 

101.  Lincoln  and  McClellan  at  Antietam 538 

102.  Lee  and  Jackson    .         .                   ........  541 

103.  Abraham  Lincoln  (the  French  statue)      .         .         .         .         .        facing  554 

104.  Ulysses  S.  Grant  in  1865 568 

105.  Railroad  land  grants,  1850-1871 570 

106.  The  Capitol  at  Washington 576 

107.  Rate  of  increase  of  population  from  1910  to  1920 579 

108.  Ellis  Island 580 

109.  Future  Americans  ...........  581 

110.  The  biggest  electric  locomotive     ........  583 

111.  Forging  a  railway  car  axle    .........  584 

112.  A  modern  blast  furnace  (the  Carrie  Furnaces  of  the  Carnegie  Steel  Com 

pany)           585 

113.  Shearing  off  steel  slabs 587 

114.  The  Panama  Canal  at  the  Miraflores  Locks 623 

115.  Ladle  pouring  molten  metal  into  pig-iron  molds    .....  638 


ILLUSTRATIONS   AND    MAPS  xiii 

PAGE 

116.  Wilson  and  Gompers  watching  a  procession  of  the  American  Federation 

of  Labor  in  1910 656 

117.  The  Minnesota  Capitol 664 

118.  The  Arrow  Rock  Dam 673 

119.  The  United  States  Supreme  Court  in  1920 681 

120.  Maps  of  the  Balkans  (the  seed  plot  of  war)  in  1912  and  1913  .         .         .694 

121.  General  John  J.  Pershing 721 

122.  "Mittel  Europa"  in  1918,  showing  also  the  frontier  states  lost  by  Rus 

sia  after  Brest-Litovsk       .........  725 

123.  German  lines  in  the  west  in  July  and  November,  1918     ....  727 

124.  American  airplanes         ..........  753 


THE  STORY   OF 

AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY 

PART  I  -  THE  ENGLISH  IN  AMERICA 
CHAPTER  I 

WHAT  THE  ENGLISH  FOUND 

AMERICAN  freedom  has  its  roots  deep  in  the  story  of 
England.  In  that  island,  comparatively  free  from  peril  of 
despotic  conquest  from  abroad,  was  first  wrought  out  for 
the  world  the  beginning  of  constitutional  liberty. 

"  Lance  and  torch  and  tumult,  steel  and  gray-goose  wing, 
Wrenched  it,  inch  and  ell  and  all,  slowly  from  the  king." 

So,  at  a  price,  in  the  field,  on  the  scaffold,  in  the  dungeon, 
and  in  the  harder  martyrdoms  of  broken  lives  and  ruined 
homes,  did  Englishmen  through  heroic  centuries  work  out 
the  union  of  a  strong  government  and  free  institutions. 

The  story  of  colonial  America  is  the  story  of  transplanting 
those  institutions  by  Englishmen  of  the  day  of  Elizabeth 
and  Shakspere  to   our  new  continent  for  a  still  The  Eng_ 
freer  growth.     Many  other  peoples  soon  began  to  KSh  roots 
play  each  its  indispensable  part  in  making  this  °rfe^£^ican 
composite  nation.     Even  in   the  closing   colonial 
period,   Frenchman,   Dutchman,    German,   gave    us    much 
of  our  blood  and  our  thought;   and,  later  still,  Norseman, 
Irishman,  and  finally   Slav   and   Latin,  besides  their  con 
tributions  in  music  and  art,  have  made  the  sinew  of  our 


2  THE  ENGLISH  IN  AMERICA 

national  life.     But  the  forces  that  have  shaped  that  life  - 
the  institution-building  forces  —  were  supplied  by  the  early 
English  settlers. 

American  history  has  no  primitive  period.  The  earliest 
colonists  had  command  enough  over  nature  not  to  be  con- 

trolled  by  her  to  any  such  degree  as  were  the 
caHn-aP  early  Greeks  or  Latins  or  the  primitive  English 
fluences:  m  their  old.  home.  Nature  has  counted  for  less, 

and  man  for  more,  than  in  Old-World  history. 
Moreover,  our  early  history  has  to  do  with  the  Appalachian 
coast  only,  and  that  fringe  of  the  continent  is  more  like  the 


LINES  or  EQUAL,  TEMPERATURE  IN  AMERICA  AND  EUROPE. 

European  homes  of  the  early  colonists  than  is  any  other 
large  district  in  America.  The  lives  of  the  English  settlers 
were  far  less  changed  by  removal  thither  than  if  they  had 
colonized  the  Mississippi  valley  or  the  Pacific  coast. 

But  the  Appalachian  coast  does  differ  from  the  European 

coast  of  the  Atlantic  in  two  matters  that  vitally  influenced 

colonization.     In  the  first  place,  the  summers  are 

of  the  Ap-     hotter    and    the   winters    colder    than    in    Europe. 

paiachian      Unexpected  fevers  in  one  season,  and  unforeseen 

district  »          •  •         .1  j  .1 

ireezmg    in    the    other,    ruined    more    than    one 
attempt  at  settlement.     Captain  George  Weymouth  explored 


GEOGRAPHY  AND  SETTLEMENT          3 

the  region  near  the  mouth  of  the  Kennebec  in  the  spring 
of  1605,  and  brought  back  to  England  glowing  reports 
of  a  balmy  climate  "  like  that  of  southern  France  "  ;  but 
the  colonists  who,  trusting  to  this  account,  tried  to  settle 
there  a  little  later,  suffered  cruelly  from  a  winter  like  that 
of  Norway.  Then,  too,  as  one  goes  from  north  to  south,  the 
climate  changes  more  swiftly  in  America  than  in  Europe.  In 
their  settlements,  between  Maine  and  Florida,  English 
colonists  encountered  climates  as  different  as  they  would 
have  found  in  the  Old  World  if  they  had  spread  out  from 
Norway  to  Morocco  —  many  times  the  variation  they  had 
known  in  the  home  island. 

Owing  to  differences  in  soil,  as  well  as  to  this  variation 
in  climate,  the  natural  products  varied  greatly  from  north  to 
south.  The  rich  lands  of  the  south  were  suited  to  the  culti 
vation  of  tobacco  or  rice  or  cotton,  in  large  tracts,  by  slaves 
or  bond  servants.  The  middle  district  could  raise  foodstuffs 
on  a  large  scale.  The  north  was  less  fertile  :  farm- 

Vfl.rvin.ff 

ing  was  not  profitable  except  in  small   holdings  occupations 
with  trustworthy  "  help  "  ;  but  the  pine  and  oak  from  north 
forests  of  that  region,  its  harbors,  and  the  fish  in 
its  seas,  invited  to  lumbering,  shipbuilding,  commerce,  and 
fishing.     Each   section   had   its   distinct  set   of    industries, 
and  so  came  to  have  its  peculiar  habits  of  living.     Virginia 
Englishman  and  New  England  Englishman  grew  apart  in 
life  and  character. 

In  our  day  these  tendencies  to  sectionalism  are  vanquished 
by  constant  intercourse  and  by  the  amazing  fluidity  of  our 
population.     Of   three   brothers   born   in   Minnesota   forty 
years  ago,  one  lives  in  New  Orleans,  one  in  San  Francisco, 
the  third  in  Boston ;  and  the  three  meet  in  occasional  visits 
of  business  or  friendship.     But  nothing  of  this  was  known 
to  the  colonial  period.     Communication  from  north  Difficulty 
to  south  was  difficult.     Colony  was  divided  from  of  com- 
colony,  or  groups  of  colonies  were  divided  from  r 
one  another,  by  arms  of  the  sea.     Even  when  two  colonies 
lay  side  by  side  without  intervening  bays,  there  were  still 
no  roads  running  from  one  to  the  other.     The  only  highways 


4  THE    ENGLISH    IN    AMERICA 

were  the  rivers,  flowing  from  the  mountains  to  the  sea,  and 
as  a  rule,  a  colony  found  it  about  as  convenient  to  communi 
cate  with  England  as  with  its  neighbor  on  either  side. 

But  geography  did  give  the  English  colonists  two  advan 
tages  over  their  European  rivals  in  America.  Their  terri- 
Engiish  ad-  t°ry  was  both  more  accessible  and  more  compact 
vantages:  than  that  held  by  France  or  Spain.  We  some- 
anTacces-  times  speak  of  the  vast  inland  valleys  of  the  St. 
sibie  terri-  Lawrence  and  the  Mississippi,  where  the  French 
cast  their  fortunes,  as  "  gateways  to  the  conti 
nent  "  ;  and  so  they  are  —  to  the  interior.  But  in  the  early 
days  men  did  not  care  to  go  far  into  the  interior.  They  liked 
better  the  fringe  of  the  continent,  where  they  could  keep 
touch  with  the  old  home.  Moreover,  in  the  age  before 
steamships,  vessels  could  hardly  ascend  the  Mississippi 
above  New  Orleans,  because  of  the  swift  current  and  count 
less  snags  and  bars,  and  much  of  the  year  the  St.  Lawrence 
was  ice-locked ;  but  the  strip  of  coast  colonized  by  Eng 
land,  between  the  Appalachians  and  the  sea,  had  countless 
little  harbors  easily  open  to  the  small  sailing  vessels  of  that 
day.  On  the  other  hand,  when  once  small  bands  of  French 
and  Spaniards  had  won  their  way  to  the  interior,  they  spread 
themselves  out  too  fast  —  faster  than  their  strength  justified. 
But  the  rugged  Appalachians,  singularly  impassable  for  such 
low  mountains,  covered  as  they  were  with  forests  tangled 
with  underbrush  and  vines,  kept  the  English  colonists  from 
scattering  too  hastily.  It  was  easier  for  the  English  than 
for  the  others  to  get  into  America  ;  and,  after  they  got  there, 
it  was  not  so  easy  for  them  to  weaken  themselves  by  dis- 
The  native  persing  too  widely.  True,  four  rivers  broke  the 
"  Indians  "  Appalachian  wall  —  the  Potomac,  Delaware,  Sus- 
quehanna,  and  Hudson-Mohawk ;  but,  without  more  engi 
neering  skill  than  that  age  possessed,  only  the  Mohawk  could 
be  used  as  a  road  to  the  inner  country  —  and  that  route 
was  closed  by  the  formidable  Iroquois. 

The  distribution  of  the  natives  reinforced  the  geographical 
influence.    We  have  little  accurate  knowledge  about  the  num- 


THE    NATIVES  5 

bers  of  the  natives ;  but  it  is  certain  that  those  east  of  the 
Mississippi  did  not  exceed  200,000.  Many  a  single  city  in 
that  district  to-day  contains  more  people  than  dwelt  in  all 
the  continent,  north  of  Mexico,  when  Europeans  first  touched 
its  shores.  Three  groups  of  Indian  peoples  held  the  country 
between  the  Mississippi  and  the  Atlantic.  The  Gulf  Tribes 
(Choctaws,  Seminoles,  Creeks)  had  made  the  most  progress 
toward  civilization ;  but  they  were  too  far  south  and  west 
to  affect  White  settlement  much  until  the  beginnings  of 


AN  ALGONKIN  VILLAGE.  From  Beverly's  History  of  Virginia  (1701)  ;  based  on 
a  picture  by  John  White  (one  of  Raleigh's  colonists)  in  1585,  now  in  the  British 
Museum.  The  palisades  must  have  been  twelve  feet  high.  Probably  a  spring 
of  water  was  found  inside.  The  fields  of  corn  and  tobacco  in  the  rear  were 
common  property.  Ceremonial  dances  were  held  within  the  circle  of  posts 
about  the  "lodge"  in  the  foreground. 

Georgia  and  Tennessee,  almost  at  the  end  of  the  colonial 
period.  The  roaming  Algonkins  were  the  largest  group, 
but  also  the  weakest  and  least  civilized.  Numbering  from 
75,000  to  100,000  souls,  —  thinly  scattered  in  petty,  mu 
tually  hostile  tribes,  —  they  "  haunted  rather  than  in 
habited  a  vast  hunting  preserve "  stretching  from  the 
Atlantic  to  the  Mississippi  and  from  the  Ohio  to  the  far 
north.  They  included  the  Powhatans,  Delawares,  Narra- 
gansetts,  Pequods,  Mohegans,  and  indeed  nearly  all  the 
tribes  with  which  the  early  English  settlers  came  in  con- 


6  WHAT  THE  ENGLISH  FOUND 

tact.  The  third  group,  the  Iroquois  Confederacy,  was  the 
strongest  native  power  for  war.  They  numbered  about 
10,000,  and  lived  in  compact,  fortified  villages  in  what  is  now 
western  New  York. 

In  South  and  Central  America  the  Spaniards  had  to  deal 
only  with  races  gentler  than  any  of  these  North  American 
And  their  Indians.  So  the  Spaniards  overran  the  continent 
influence  on  faster  than  they  could  occupy  it.  Their  rule,  too, 
was  built  upon  the  slavery  of  the  natives,  and 
the  conquerors  mixed  their  blood  with  this  enslaved  popu 
lation  until  their  own  nationality  was  lost.  In  the  north, 
the  French  came  into  conflict  with  the  formidable  Iroquois, 
and  deadly  blows  from  this  fierce  confederacy  did  much  to 
prevent  French  mastery  in  America.  The  English,  in  their 
time  of  weakness,  touched  only  the  Algonkins,  who  could 
not  seriously  imperil  their  settlement.  At  the  same  time 
the  Algonkins  were  untameable,  and  so  the  English  did  not 
mix  blood  with  them.  And  they  were  dangerous  enough 
to  scattered  settlements  to  help  keep  the  English  colonies 
fairly  compact.  This  compact  settlement  gave  opportunity 
for  truer  civilization  and  for  more  division  of  labor  and 
consequent  industrial  progress,  and  made  it  easier  for  the 
colonies  to  unite  against  England  when  the  time  came. 
The  natives,  like  nature,  seeming  unkind  to  the  English 
settler,  were  really  kinder  to  him  than  to  his  rivals. 

In  various  ways,  too,  the  Indians  aided  English  coloniza 
tion  directly.  They  furnished  the  first  settlements  with 
« Indian  the  "  Indian  corn  "  that  warded  off  starvation  ; 
corn  "  and  and  soon  they  taught  the  settlers  to  plant  both 
corn  (maize)  and  tobacco  —  the  two  native  prod 
ucts  of  supreme  value  in  the  early  period.  Maize  was  long 
the  main  food  supply.  European  grains  failed  in  the  new 
climate  season  after  season,  while  the  colonist  was  learning 
the  new  conditions.  Moreover,  to  clear  and  prepare  the 
soil  for  wheat  or  barley  took  much  time.  Maize  was  a  surer 
crop  and  needed  less  toil.  The  colonist  learned  from  the 
Indian  to  raise  it,  at  need,  without  even  clearing  the  forest, 


SPAIN    IN    AMERICA  7 

-  merely  girdling  the  trees  to  kill  the  foliage,  and  planting 
among  the  standing  trunks.  It  was  no  accident  that  this 
Indian  grain  came  to  be  called  "  corn,"  the  general  name 
for  European  grains.  Tobacco  the  colonist  exchanged  for 
European  goods.  If  Indian  corn  enabled  him  to  live  through 
the  first  hard  years,  it  was  tobacco  that  first  made  him  rich. 
Nor  do  these  gifts  tell  the  whole  story  of  the  European 
settlers'  debt  to  the  natives.  Colonies  too  far  north  to 
raise  tobacco  found  their  first  wealth  in  furs, 
obtained  mainly  from  native  hunters.  Indian  tributions" 
wampum  at  times  made  an  important  part  of  from  the 

.  .,  -r,  .,  .    ,         !  natives 

colonial  money,  lorest  trails,  worn  into  deep 
paths  by  the  feet  of  generations  of  Redmen,  became  high 
ways  for  White  travel.  The  New  York  Central  Railroad 
follows  the  old  Iroquois  trail  from  Lake  Erie  to  the  Hud 
son  ;  and  in  Minneapolis  one  of  the  finest  streets  (Hennepin 
Avenue)  is  an  ancient  Indian  trail  from  the  neighboring 
Lake  Harriet  to  the  Mississippi  just  above  the  Falls  of  St. 
Anthony.  Water  routes,  too,  discovered  by  native  pilots 
in  birch  canoes,  were  adopted  by  White  traders.  And  sta 
tions  for  the  exchange  of  furs,  where  certain  trails  and 
waterways  joined,  became  the  sites  of  mighty  cities  like 
Milwaukee,  Chicago,  St.  Louis,  Detroit,  and  Duluth. 

Spain  was  first  in  the  field  in  American  colonization. 
During  the  crusades,  Europe  had  learned  to  depend  on 
Asiatic  spices,  sugars,  cottons,  silks,  and  metal-  Spain  in 
wares,  as  luxuries  and  even  as  daily  necessities.  America 
For  two  hundred  years  a  vast  caravan  trade  had  brought 
these  articles,  in  a  steady  stream,  from  central  Asia  to  the 
eastern  shores  of  the  Mediterranean ;  but  in  the  fifteenth 
century  the  rise  of  Turkish  barbarians  in  Asia  Minor  closed 
this  route.  Europe,  just  then  awaking  from  the  long  torpor 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  astir  with  new  impulses,  eagerly 
sought  new  trade  routes  into  Asia.  Portugal  found  one,  to 
the  south,  around  Africa.  Columbus,  aided  by  the  Spanish 
Isabella,  tried  a  still  bolder  western  road  —  and  stumbled  on 
America  in  his  path. 


8  ENGLAND'S    RIVALS 

This  discovery  marked  the  close  of  the  fifteenth  century. 
The  next  century  in  the  New  World  was  Spain's.  The  story 
of  her  conquests  is  a  tale  of  heroic  endeavor,  marred  by  re 
volting  ferocity.  The  details,  as  an  old  Spanish  chronicler 
said,  are  "  all  horrid  transactions,  nothing  pleasant  in  any 
of  them."  Not  till  twenty  years  after  the  discovery  did 
the  Spaniards  advance  to  the  mainland  for  settlement ; 
but,  once  begun,  her  handfuls  of  adventurers  swooped 
swiftly  north  and  south.  By  1550,  she  held  not  only  all 


COLUMBUS  AT  THE  COURT  OF  FERDINAND  AND  ISABELLA.     From  the  painting  by 
Brozik  in  the  Metropolitan  Museum  in  New  York  City. 

South  America  (save  Portugal's  Brazil),  but  also  all  Central 
America,  Mexico,  the  Californias  far  up  the  Pacific  coast, 
and  the  Floridas.  The  gold  from  Mexico  and  Peru  helped 
to  give  Spain  her  proud  place  as  the  most  powerful  country 
in  Europe  through  most  of  the  sixteenth  century ;  and  she 
guarded  her  American  possessions  jealously.  The  Gulf  of 
Mexico  and  the  Caribbean  were  Spanish  lakes,  and  the 
whole  Pacific  was  a  "  closed  sea."  Frenchman  or  English 
man,  caught  upon  those  waters,  was  given  a  grave  beneath 
them. 


FRANCE  IN  AMERICA  9 

Nor  was  Spain  content  with  even  this  huge  empire  on 
land  and  sea.  She  planned  grandly  to  occupy  the  Mississippi 
valley  and  the  Appalachian  slope  in  America,  and  Spain's 
to  seize  Holland  and  England  in  Europe.  But,  in  failure 
1588,  she  received  a  fatal  check  when  the  gallant  English 
"  sea  dogs  "  destroyed  her  "  Invincible  Armada  "  in  that 
wonderful  nine-days  sea  fight.  That  victory  did  more  than 
merely  save  England  :  it  marked  a  turning  point  in  World 
history.  Spain  never  recovered  her  old  supremacy  upon 
the  sea,  and  so  other  European  people?  were  left  free  to  try 
their  fortunes  in  America. 

For  a  time  France  seemed  most  likely  to  succeed  Spain 
as  mistress  of  North  America.  A  quarter  of  a  century 
went  to  exploration  and  failures.  Then,  in  1608,  France  in 
Champlain  founded  a  French  colony  at  Quebec.  Amenca 
Soon,  canoe  fleets  of  traders  and  missionaries  were  coasting 
the  shores  of  the  Great  Lakes  and  establishing  French  sta 
tions  there  at  points  still  known  by  French  names.  Finally, 
in  1682,  after  years  of  splendid  effort,  La  Salle  succeeded  in 
following  the  Mississippi  to  the  Gulf,  setting  up  a  French 
claim  to  the  entire  valley.  In  later  years  New  France  con 
sisted  of  the  colony  on  the  St.  Lawrence,  in  the  far  north, 
and  the  semi-tropical  colony  of  New  Orleans,  joined  to  each 
other,  along  the  interior  waterways,  by  a  slight  chain  of 
trading  posts  and  military  stations  —  Detroit,  Sault  Ste. 
Marie,  Vincennes,  Kaskaskia,  St.  Louis,  and  the  like. 

From  the  beginning  of  this  colonization,  it  was  plain  that 
France  and  England  were  the  real  rivals  for  the  control  of 
eastern    North    America.       The     open    struggle  France  and 
between  them  began   in    1689,    and  lasted   some  England  the 
seventy  years    in  a  series  of  wars,    until  France  Jj™]M°r 
was  thrust  out  of  the  continent  in  1763. 

It  is  easy  to  point  out  certain  French    advantages.      At 
home  French  statesmen  worked  steadily  to  build  a  French 
empire  in  America,  while  the  English  government  French  ad- 
ignored  English  colonies.     The  thought  of  such  an  vantases 
empire,  too,  inspired  French  explorers  in  the  wilderness,  — 


10  ENGLAND'S  RIVALS 

splendid  patriots  like  Champlain,  Ribault,  and  La  Salle. 
France  also  sent  forth  the  most  zealous  of  missionaries, 
like  the  heroic  Marquette,  to  convert  the  savages.  These 
two  mighty  motives,  patriotism  and  missionary  zeal,  played 
a  greater  part  in  founding  New  France  than  in  establishing 
either  Spanish  or  English  colonies.  Moreover,  the  French 
could  deal  with  the  natives  better  than  the  less  sympathetic 
English  could,  and  their  leaders  were  men  of  far-reaching 
views. 


CHAMPLAIN'S  FIGHT  WITH  THE  IROQUOIS,  on  the  shores  of  Lake  Champlain.  From 
Les  Voyages  du  Sieur  de  Champlain  (Paris,  1613),  the  volume  in  which  this 
lake  is  first  given  Champlain's  name. 

Why,  then,  did  France  fail  ? 

The  chief  external  cause  was  the  relentless  hatred  of  the 
Iroquois.  Curiously  enough,  it  was  the  ability  of  the  French 
Theiroquois  to  ma^e  friends  with  the  natives,  which  brought 
and  the  upon  them  this  terrible  scourge.  Champlain  came 
first  in  touch  with  Algonkin  tribes,  and  won  their 
friendship.  He  accompanied  these  allies  on  the  warpath 
against  the  Iroquois,  —  and  so  made  the  Iroquois  foes  to  New 
France.  (1)  The  Iroquois  annihilated  the  Huron  Indians, 
whom  French  missionaries,  after  many  heroic  martyrdoms, 
had  christianized,  and  upon  whom  the  French  had  hoped  to 


FRENCH  POSTS  AND 

INDIAN  PORTAGES 

HTH  CENTURY 


WHY    FRANCE    FAILED  11 

build  a  native  civilization.  (2)  At  times  they  struck  terrible 
blows  at  New  France  itself.  (3)  They  shielded  the  English  col 
onies,  during  their  weakness,  from  French  attack.  The  French 
in  Canada  could  strike  at  the  English  only  by  way  of  the 
route  followed  later  by  Burgoyne.  Everywhere  else  the 
wilderness  between  Canada  and  the  English  settlements 
was  impassable  except  by  prowling  bands ;  and  this  one 
route  was  guarded  by  the  Iroquois.  (4)  They  changed  the 
whole  course  of  French  exploration,  turning  it  to  the  north. 

The  home  of  the  confederacy  in  western  New  York  was 
"  the  military  key  to  the  eastern  half  of  the  continent,"  as 
Winfield  Scott  called  it,  and  Ulysses  S.  Grant  afterward. 
It  commanded  the  headwaters  of  the  Delaware,  Susque- 
hanna,  and  Mohawk-Hudson  system,  and  the  portage  at 
Niagara  from  Erie  to  Ontario,  as  well  as  part  of  the  head 
waters  of  the  Ohio.  The  French  leaders  had  keen  eyes  for 
military  geography  and  would  certainly  have  seized  this 
position  at  any  cost,  if  they  had  been  able  to  learn  its  char 
acter.  They  would  then  have  fortified  the  Ohio  by  a  chain 
of  posts,  as  they  did  their  other  waterways ;  and  this  would 
have  buttressed  their  position  on  the  Mississippi  and  the 
Lakes  so  as  to  defy  attack. 

But  the  French  did  not  suspect  the  importance  of  the 
Ohio  valley  until  too  late.     Montreal  was  founded  in  1611 ; 
but,  instead  of  reaching  the  interior  from  there  French 
by  the  upper  St.  Lawrence  and  Lake  Erie,  French  colonization 

j  j.i        ^j.  •  i    diverted 

traders  turned  up  the  Ottawa,  so  as  to  avoid  from  the 
the  Iroquois,  and  reached  Lake  Huron  by  port-  Ohio  valley 
age  from  Nipissing.  Lake  Erie  was  the  last,  instead  of  the 
first,  of  the  Lakes  to  be  explored.  It  was  practically  unused 
until  after  1700,  and  the  country  to  the  south  remained 
unknown  even  longer.  Navigation  was  by  fleets  of  canoes, 
which  had  to  land  frequently.  Thus,  because  of  the  Iro 
quois,  the  French  could  not  follow  the  southern  shore,  or 
use  the  portage  at  Niagara.  When  they  awakened  to  the 
value  of  the  Ohio  valley,  English  traders  had  begun  to  push 
into  it,  with  cheaper  goods ;  and  the  opportunity  for  France 
was  already  lost.  England's  industrial  superiority  over 


12  ENGLAND'S    RIVALS 

France,  let  us  note  in  passing,  was  one  factor  in  winning 
America.     After  1725  that  superiority  was  marked. 

Inherent    weaknesses    in    French    colonization,    however, 
were  the  fundamental  cause  of  French  failure. 

1.  New  France  was  not  a  country  of  homes  or  of  agricul 
ture.     Except  for  a  few  leaders  and  the  missionaries,  the 
inherent        settlers    were    either    unprogressive    peasants    or 
causes  of       reckless   adventurers.      For   the   most  part  they 
failure-          ^id   no^   bring  families,    and  they  remained   un- 
lack  of          married  or  chose  Indian  wives.     Agriculture  was 

the  only  basis  for  a  permanent  colony ;  but 
these  colonists  did  not  take  to  any  regular  labor.  Instead, 
they  turned  to  trapping  and  the  fur  trade,  and  tended  to 
adopt  Indian  habits.  The  French  government  in  Europe 
sought  in  vain  to  remedy  this  by  sending  over  cargoes  of 
"  king's  girls,"  and  by  offering  bonuses  for  early  marriages 
and  large  families.  But  even  with  this  fostering,  French 
colonization  did  not  produce  numbers.  In  1754,  when  the 
final  struggle  for  the  American  continent  began,  France 
had  three  times  as  many  people  as  England  had,  but  in 
America  she  had  only  a  twentieth  as  many  colonists. 

2.  Paternalism   smothered   private   enterprise.     In   all   in 
dustries,  New  France  was  taught  to  depend  upon  the  aid 
Paternalism    and  direction  of   a   government   three   thousand 
in  industry     miles  away.     Aid  was  constantly  asked  from  the 
king.     "  Send  us  money  to  build  storehouses,"  ran  the  beg 
ging  letters  of  Canadian  officials ;  "  Send  us  a  teacher  to 
make  sailors  " ;  •"  We  want  a  surgeon  "  ;  and  so,  at  various 
times,   requests  for  brickmakers,  ironworkers,  pilots,    and 
other  skilled  workers.     Such  requests  were  usually  granted  ; 
but  New  France  did  not  learn  to  walk  alone.     The  rulers 
did  much ;  but  the  people  did  little. 

3.  Political  life  was  lacking.     In  the  seventeenth  century 
France   itself   was    a   centralized   despotism ;  and   in   New 
Lack  of         France  (to  use  the  phrase  of  Tocqueville)  "  this 
political  life    deformity  was  seen  magnified  as  through  a  micro 
scope."    No  public  meetings  were  permitted  without  a  special 
license;  and  such  meetings,  when  held,  could  do  nothing 


WHY    FRANCE    FAILED  13 

worth  while.  All  sorts  of  matters,  even  the  regulation  of 
inns  and  of  pew  rent,  the  order  in  which  people  should  sit 
in  church,  the  keeping  of  dogs  and  of  cattle,  the  pay  of 
chimney  sweeps,  were  settled  by  ordinances  of  the  governors 
at  Quebec,  who  were  sent  over  by  the  French  king.  "  It 
is  of  the  greatest  importance,"  wrote  one  official,  "  that  the 
people  should  not  be  at  liberty  to  speak  their  minds." 

And  the  people  had  no  minds  to  speak.  In  1672, 
Frontenac,  the  greatest  governor  of  New  France,  tried  to 
introduce  the  elements  of  self-government.  He  provided 
a  system  of  "  estates  "  to  advise  with  him,  —  a  gathering 
of  clergy,  nobles,  and  commons  (citizens  and  merchants) ; 
and  he  ordered  that  Quebec  should  have  a  sort  of  town 
meeting  twice  a  year  to  elect  aldermen  and  to  discuss  public 
business.  But  the  home  government  sternly  disapproved 
all  this,  directing  Frontenac  to  remember  that  it  was  "  proper 
that  each  should  speak  for  himself,  and  no  one  for  the  whole." 
The  plan  fell  to  pieces  :  the  people  cared  so  little  for  it  that 
they  made  no  effort  to  save  it.  When  such  a  plan  was  intro 
duced  in  Virginia  (which  also  during  its  first  years  had 
lacked  such  privileges)  we  shall  see  that  no  mere  paper  de 
cree  could  take  it  away. 

The  easiest  way  for  France  to  have  corrected  the  evils 
in  her  colonization  would  have  been  to  let  the  Huguenots 
come  to  America.     They  were  the  most  skillful  Exciusion 
artisans   and   agriculturists   in  France   and   they  of  the 
had    shown    some    knack    for    self-government. 
Moreover,   they  were  anxious  to  come,  and  to  bring  their 
families.     But  the  government,   which  lavished  money  in 
sending  out  undesirable  emigrants,   refused  to  allow  these 
heretics  to  establish  a  state  in  America.     After  all,  in  large 
part,  it  was  religious  bigotry  that  cost  France  her  chance  for 
empire. 


CHAPTER  II 

VIRGINIA  AND   MARYLAND,   TO   1660 

I.   THE   MOTIVES  OF  EARLY  ENGLISH   COLONIZATION 

Virginia  was  founded  by  a  great  liberal  movement  aiming  at  the  spread 
of  English  freedom  and  of  English  empire.  —  HENRY  ADAMS. 

It  is  to  the  self-government  of  England,  and  to  no  lesser  cause,  that  we 
are  to  look  for  the  secret  of  that  boundless  vitality  which  has  given  to  men 
of  English  speech  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth  as  an  inheritance. 

—  JOHN  FISKE. 

THE  first  impulse  to  English  colonization  came  from  Eng 
lish   patriotism.     When   Elizabeth's    reign    was    half    com- 
pleted,   little    England    entered    upon    a    daring 
colonization    rivalry  with  the  overshadowing  might  of  Spain. 

antrioSsmh  ^ut  °^  ^at  riya^ry'  English  America  was  born. 
Reckless  and  picturesque  freebooters,  like  Drake 
and  Hawkins,  sought  profit  and  honor  for  themselves,  and 
injury  to  the  foe,  by  raiding  rich  provinces  of  Spanish 
America.  More  far-sighted  statesmen,  like  Raleigh,  saw 
that  English  colonies  in  America  would  be  "  a  great  bridle 
to  the  Indies  of  the  Kinge  of  Spaine,"  and  began  to  try 
so  to  **  put  a  byt  in  the  anchent  enymys  mouth."  Wrote 
Richard  Hakluyt  (Western  Planting,  1584  A.D.)  :  "  If  you 
touch  him  [Spain]  in  the  Indies,  you  touch  him  in  the  apple 
of  his  eye.  For,  take  away  his  treasure  —  which  he  has 
almost  wholly  out  of  his  West  Indies  —  his  olde  bandes  of 
souldiers  will  soon  be  dissolved,  his  pride  abated,  and  his 
tyranie  utterly  suppressed." 

But  to  found  a  colony  in  those  days  was  harder  than 
we  can  well  comprehend.  The  mere  outlay  of  money  was 
enormous  for  that  time.  Ships  had  little  storage  room ;  so 

14 


MOTIVES    OF    THE    ENGLISH    PROMOTERS  15 

freights    were    high,   and    the   best    accommodations    were 
poorer  than  modern  steerage.     To  carry  a  man  from  Eng 
land  to  America  cost  from  £10  to  £12,  or  about  The  dif- 
$300  in  our  values  (since  money  in  1600  was  worth  ficulties 
five  times  as  much  as  now).     To  provide  his  outfit  and  to 
support  him  until  he  could  raise  a  crop,  cost  as  much  more. 


QUEEN  ELIZABETH  KNIGHTING  DRAKE,  on  board  the  Golden  Hind  on  his  return 
from  raiding  Spanish  America  in  his  voyage  around  the  globe  (1581).  From 
a  contemporary  drawing  by  Sir  John  Gilbert. 

Thus  to  establish  a  family  in  America  took  some  thousands 
of  dollars. 

Moreover,  there  were  no  ships  ready  for  the  business, 
and  no  supplies.  The  directors  of  the  early  colonizing 
movements  met  all  sorts  of  costly  delays  and  vexations. 
They  had  to  buy  ships,  or  build  them ;  and,  in  Channing's 
apt  phrase,  they  had  to  buy  food  for  the  voyages  "  on  the 
hoof  or  in  the  shock,"  and  clothing  "  on  the  sheep's  back." 
They  had  also  to  provide  government,  medicines,  fortifica 
tions,  military  supplies,  and  food  to  meet  a  possible  crop 


16  EARLY    ENGLISH    COLONIZATION 

failure.     Much  money,  too,  was  sure  to  be  lost  in  experi 
menting  with  unfit  industries  under  untried  conditions  — 
as  in  the  futile  attempts  to  produce  silk  and  make  glass  in 
Virginia. 

The  English  crown  founded  no  colonies,  nor  did  it  give 
money  toward  founding  any.  It  did  give  charters  to  those 
Policy  of  men  who  were  willing  to  risk  their  fortunes  in  the 
the  crown  attempt.  These  charters  were  grants  of  territory 
and  of  authority  over  future  settlers.  Thus  the  English 
colonies  (with  a  few  accidental  exceptions,  which  will  be 
noticed)  were  at  first  proprietary.  The  proprietor  might 
be  an  individual  or  an  English  corporation.  In  either  case, 
the  proprietor  owned  the  land  and  ruled  the  settlers. 

The  first  colonial  charter  was  granted  by  Elizabeth,  in 
1578,  to  Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert.  Gilbert  made  two  brave 
Gilbert's  attempts  at  a  colony.  The  second,  in  the  spring 
charter,  of  1583,  entered  St.  John's  Harbor  on  the  New 
foundland  coast.  Gilbert's  claims  were  recog 
nized  readily  by  the  captains  of  the  "  thirty-six  ships  of 
all  nations"  present  there  for  the  fisheries;  but  desertion 
and  disaster  weakened  the  colonists,  and  in  August  the 
survivors  sailed  for  England.  Gilbert  had  sunk  his  fortune, 
and  he  himself  perished  on  the  return  voyage.  Song  and 
story  dwell  fondly  on  the  Christian  knight's  last  words, 
shouted  cheerily  through  the  storm-wrack  from  his  sinking 
little  ship  to  comfort  friends  on  the  larger  consort,  -  '  The 
way  to  heaven  is  as  near  by  sea  as  by  land." 

Gilbert's  enterprise  was  taken  up  at  once  by  his  half 
brother,  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  the  most  gallant  figure  of  that 
Raleigh's  daring  age.  In  1584  Raleigh  received  a  charter 
attempts  copied  from  Gilbert's,  and  in  the  next  three  years 
he  sent  three  expeditions  to  Roanoke  Island  on  the  Caro 
lina  coast,  each  time  in  considerable  fleets.  His  first  ex 
plorers  declared  the  new  land  "  the  most  plentiful,  sweet, 
fruitful,  and  wholesome  of  all  the  world,"  and  the  natives 
were  affirmed  to  be  "  such  as  live  after  the  manner  of  the 
golden  age."  But  supplies  and  reinforcements  were  delayed 
by  the  struggle  with  the  Spanish  Armada ;  and  when  the 


MOTIVES  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PROMOTERS  17 

next  supply   ships  did   arrive,  the  colonists  had  vanished 
without  trace. 

Raleigh  had  spent  a  vast  fortune  (a  million  dollars  in  our 
values) ;  and,  though  he  sent  ships  from  time  to  time  to 
search  for  the  lost  colonists,  he  could  make  no  further  at 
tempt  at  settlement.  Still,  despite  their  failures,  Gilbert 
and  Raleigh  are  the  fathers  of  American  colonization.  The 
tremendous  and  unforeseen  difficulties  of  the  enterprise 
overmatched  even  the  indomitable  will  of  these  Elizabethan 
heroes ;  but  their  efforts  had  aroused  their  countrymen  and 
made  success  certain  in  the  near  future.  With  pathetic 
courage,  when  in  prison  and  near  his  death,  Raleigh  wrote, 
"  I  shall  yet  see  it  [America]  an  English  nation." 

For  twenty -five  years,  attempts  at  colonization  had  failed, 
largely  because  the  life-and-death  struggle  with  Spain  in 
Europe  drained  England's  energies.     Worse  was  jamesi 
to  come.     James  I  (1603)  sought  Spanish  friend-  and  sPain 
ship  ;  and  then  indeed  Englishmen  began  to  feel  their  chance 
for  empire    slipping    through   their  fingers.    But   splendid 
memories  of  the  great  Elizabethan  days  still  stirred  men's 
hearts ;   and,  as  a  protest  against  James'  dastard  policy  in 
Europe,  the  fever  for  colonization  awoke  again  in  the  heart 
of  the  nation.     Men  said  a  terrible  mistake  had  been  made 
when  Henry  VII  refused  to  adopt  the  enterprise  of  Colum 
bus  ;    and  they  insisted  vehemently  that  England  The  London 
should   not   now    abandon  Virginia  —  "this   one  Company, 
enterprise  left   unto  these  days."      Raleigh  had  ] 
found  part  of  his  money  by  forming  a  partnership  with  some 
London  merchants.     In  1606  some  of  these  same  merchants 
organized  a  large  stock  company  to  build  a  colony,  and 
secured  from  King  James  a  grant  known  as  the  Charter  of 
1606,  or  the  First  Virginia  Charter. 

The  members  of  this  Company  hoped  for  commercial 
gain.  No  doubt  some  of  its  members  cared  only  for  this. 
But  the  great  leaders  cared  more,  like  Raleigh  and  Gilbert, 
to  build  up  the  power  of  England,  and  some  of  them  had 
it  much  at  heart  to  Christianize  the  savages.  This  mis- 


18 


EARLY  ENGLISH  COLONIZATION 


sionary  purpose  faded  soon  for  actual  colonists,  but  it  long 
continued  powerful  in  England.     The  great  clergymen  who 
.  guided    the    Church   of    England    (then   recently 

the  pro-  cut  off  from  Rome)  could  not  rest  content  with 
"this  little  En^nsh  paddock"  while  Rome  was 
winning  new  continents  to  herself  by  her  de 
voted  missionaries ;  nor  could  these  good  churchmen  help 

squirming  under  the 
taunt  of  the  Romanists 
"shewinge  that  they  are 
the  true  Catholicke 
churche  because  they 
have  bene  the  onelie 


THE  PRINCIPAL!, 

NAVIGATIONS,VOIA~ 


GES  AND  DISCOVERIES  OF  THE 

Englifli  rtation,made  by  Sea  or  ouer  Hand, 

to  the moH  remote  ami  fartlietl  distant  Quarter:  of 
thcearthat  any  time  within  thecompafle 

eftijrjt  f  rcy.jtfrf!:  llittidftliatvlkree 


Thcfirft,contemingthcpcrfona!l  trauelsofthc  Englifh 

rj^Xtheriucr  Luphntes,  Bthtoitj-Btlfir*,  the  Perft'ja  Gulfe,  Ormas,  cfuul, 
<7wi,;W/>,atid  many  liliuds  adioyning  to  the  South  part?  of O//AJ  .-toge 
ther  with  the  like  vtito  Eqtpr,  the  chiefcft  pores  and  places  QfAjncA  with 
in  and  without  the  Sncighc  of  Gibraltar,  and  about  die  famous  Proraon- 
toric  otS 


r'm&itfr, 


doms  of 'ft. 


attempts  in  fcarchuig  aJ- 
i  of  '^fmtrtct,  from  73.de- 


The  fecondjComprehending  the  worthy  difcoueries  of  the  EngStfh  towards 
the  North  and  Northeaft  by  Sea,as  ofl^aul,  Scrityai*,  Cere/u,  the  Baic 
ofs.Xicluln,ihc  Hlcsol'CV/jWfW,  f'aig*n,  and  7*j«t  Zenlitt  toward  the 
reat  tiuer  Oi.with  the  mightie  Empire  ofgajpi,  the  Ctftltn  S<:*,Gcergit, 

The  tliird  and  laft.includingthe  Engli(h  valiant 
moft  all  the  corners  of  the  vaftc  and  neiv  world 


the  inaine  of  rwj/'»w,the  point  of  Fti>rMi,iheBiicoF<JtftxKo,  all  the  In 
land  0(7*3*4  Htfpjnit,  the  coaft  fAT<rriprm.i?Brtfi!l,  the  riaer  o(pktt,K> 
the  Strcightof'jM^/Ma;  and  through  it,and  from  it  in  the  South  Sea  to 

olCauiU,  further  then  cuer  any  Chriftim  hitherto  hath  pkiced. 

Whtreuntti  it  aide  A  the  lift  nioit  rimmmed  f.nMi  NtxigatioK, 

round  about  UK  whok  Globe  of  Ac  Ear*. 
t,t& 


"Yea,"  confesses  the 
chagrined  Hakluyt,  "I 
myself  have  bene  de- 
maunded  of  them  how 
many  infidells  have  bene 
by  us  con  verted."  Such 
Englishmen  cared  for 
the  London  Company 
mainly  in  its  aspect  as 
a  foreign  missionary  so 
ciety —  the  first  in  the 
Protestant  world ;  and 
this  missionary  charac 
ter  brought  the  Com 
pany  much  moral  sup 
port  and  many  gifts  of 
money  from  outsiders. 

For  years,  even  this 
great  Company  had  to 
struggle  with  discour 
agement  and  distress. 
But  its  pamphlets,  urging  people  to  buy  stock,  did  not 
place  emphasis  on  any  hope  of  large  dividends  —  as  we 


tfmbrintcdat  London  £y  G  E  o  u  c,  E  BISHOP 

and  RALPH    N  E  w  B  E  R  i  E,  Deputies  to 

CHRISTOPHER  BARKER,  Printer  to  the 

QutOK!  m.  .11  nccUuit  Mucflie. 


converters 
millions     of 


of    many 
infidells." 


TITLE  PAGE  OF  HAKLUYT'S  Voyages.  Richard 
Hakluyt  was  a  clergyman  of  the  English 
church  whom  Raleigh  had  interested  deeply 
in  colonization.  His  earlier  book  has  been 
quoted  on  page  14. 


MOTIVES  OF  THE  COLONISTS  19 

expect  a  prospectus  of  a  commercial  company  to  do  —  but 
rather  on  the  meanness  and  "avarice"  of  the  man  who 
would  "save"  his  money  instead  of  using  it  to  extend  Eng 
lish  freedom  and  the  kingdom  of  God.  It  was  these  high 
enthusiasms,  far  more  than  it  was  greed,  that,  a  few 
years  later,  brought  hundreds  of  the  noblest  of  Englishmen 
to  the  rescue  of  the  enterprise. 

So  far  we  have  looked  only  at  the  motives  of  Motives  of 
Englishmen  who  stayed  at  home  and  there  helped  the  coio- 
to  promote  American  colonization.     Now  for  the 
motives  of  the  colonists. 

In  1600  England  needed  room.  True,  the  island  had 
still  only  a  tenth  as  many  people  as  to-day  ;  but,  as  industry 
was  carried  on  in  that  day,  its  four  millions  were  more 
crowded  than  its  forty  millions  are  now.  For  the  small  farm 
ers  especially,  life  had  become  very  hard,  and  these  yeo 
men  furnished  most  of  the  manual  labor  in  the  early  colonies. 
Few  of  this  class  could  pay  the  cost  of  transporting  them 
selves  and  their  families  to  America ;  and  so  commonly 
they  were  glad  to  bind  themselves  by  written  "indentures" 
to  become  "servants"  to  some  wealthy  proprietor.  That 
is,  these  indentured  servants  mortgaged  their  labor  for  four 
years,  or  seven  years,  in  return  for  transportation  and 
subsistence,  and  perhaps  for  a  tract  of  wild  land  at  the  end 
of  their  term  of  service. 

Captains  and  capitalists  came  from  the  English  gentry 
class.     Until  the  peace  with   Spain  in   1604,   many  high- 
spirited  youths  had  been  fighting  Spain  in  the  The 
Netherlands,  for  Dutch  independence  ;  and  others  «  younger 
had    made    the     "gentlemen-adventurers"    who, 
under  leaders  like  Drake,  had  paralyzed  the  far- 
flung  domains  of  New  Spain  with  fear.     To  these  men,  and 
to  many  "younger  sons"  of  gentry  families  for  whom  there 
was  now  no  career  at  home,  America  beckoned  alluringly  as 
the  land  of  opportunity  and  adventure.     The  period,  too, 
was  one  of  rapid  rise  in  the  cost  of  living ;    and  the  heads  of 
some  good  families  found  themselves  unable  to  keep  pace 


20  EARLY  ENGLISH  COLONIZATION 

with  old  associates.  Some  of  these  preferred  leadership  in 
the  New  World  to  taking  in  sail  at  home. 

None  of  these  "gentlemen"  were  used  to  steady  work,  and 
they  were  restive  under  discipline ;  so  sometimes  they  drew 
down  abuse  from  strict  commanders  like  the  worthy  Captain 
John  Smith.  But  they  were  of  that  "restless,  pushing 
material  of  which  the  world's  best  pathfinders  have  ever 
been  made";  and  when  they  had  learned  the  needs  of 
frontier  life,  their  pluck  and  endurance  made  them  splendid 
colonists. 

It  must  be  remembered  also  that  among  the  settlers  there 

were  always  a  few  rare  men  animated  wholly  by  patriotic 

devotion  or  by  religious  zeal  or  by  a  lofty  spirit 

The  idealists       „       ,  T»  Ai_     .e      L  T  r 

of  adventure.  Even  the  first  Jamestown  expedi 
tion  (not  a  fair  sample,  either)  included,  among  its  104  souls, 
Bartholomew  Gosnold,  a  knightly  survivor  of  the  spacious 
Elizabethan  days  ;  and  doughty  John  Smith,  a  robust  hero, 
"even  though  his  imagination  did  sometimes  transcend  the 
narrow  limits  of  fact" ;  and  the  gentle  and  lovable  church 
man,  Robert  Hunt ;  to  say  nothing  of  worthies  such  as  Percy 
and  Newport.  The  modern  community  which,  for  each 
twenty  souls,  can  show  one  built  on  a  mold  like  these  is  not 
unhappy.  The  next  three  years,  too,  saw  in  Virginia  many 
another  gallant  gentleman,  like  Thomas  Gates,  John  Rolfe, 
and  Francis  West. 

At  a  later  period,  we  shall  see,  Puritanism  and  desire  for 
religious  freedom  became  added  motives  for  English  colo- 
EX  ectations  niza^on-  But  f°r  tne  early  settlers  the  chief  load- 
of  wealth  stone,  no  doubt,  was  some  wild  dream  of  wealth  - 
exaggerated  sucn  as  js  pictured  in  Marston's  Eastward  Hoe 
Marston's  (1605 ;  the  name  a  survival  of  the  idea  that 
'^Eastward  Columbus  had  found  the  East).  At  a  tavern 

meeting  the  mate,  Sea  Gull,  is  enticing  some  young 
blades  to  embark  for  a  proposed  Virginia  voyage :  - 

Sea  Gull.  Come  boyes,  Virginia  longs  till  we  share  the  rest 
of  her  .  .  . 

Scape  Thrift.     But  is  there  such  treasure  there,  Captaine  .  .  .    ? 
Sea  Gull.     I  tell  thee,  golde  is  more  plentifull  there  then  copper 


MOTIVES  OF  THE  COLONISTS  21 

is  with  us ;  and  for  as  much  redde  copper  as  I  can  bring,  He  have 
thrise  the  waight  in  gold.  Why,  man,  all  their  dripping  pans 
.  .  .  are  pure  gould ;  and  all  the  chaines  with  which  they  chaine 
up  their  streets  are  massie  gold ;  all  the  prisoners  they  take  are 
fettered  in  gold ;  and  for  rubies  and  diamonds  they  goe  forth  on 
holydayes  and  gather  'em  by  the  seashore  to  hang  on  their  childrens 
coates,  and  sticke  in  their  childrens  caps,  as  commonly  as  our 
children  wear  saffron-gilt  brooches.  .  .  .  Besides,  there  wee 
shall  have  no  more  law  than  consceince,  and  not  too  much  of 
eyther. 

This  gross  caricature  called  forth  violent  denunciation 
from  good  clergymen,  like  Crashaw,  who  retorted  from  the 
pulpit  that  Virginia  had  three  enemies,  —  "the  Divell,  the 
Papists,  and  the  Players."  1  But  it  remains  true  that  in 
the  first  colonies  the  expectations  of  sudden  riches  were 
more  extravagant  than  in  later  attempts,  and  led  for  a  time 
to  disastrous  neglect  of  the  right  sort  of  work.  Still  the  mo 
tive  was  a  proper  one.  It  calls  for  no  sneer.  It  was  the  same 
desire  to  better  one's  condition,  which,  in  a  later  century,  lured 
the  descendants  of  the  first  settlers  to  people  the  continent 
from  the  Appalachians  to  the  Golden  Gate.  Moreover, 
the  motive  was  not  mere  greed.  The  youth  was  moved 
by  a  vision  of  romance  and  adventure.  He  was  drawn 
partly  by  the  glitter  of  gold,  but  quite  as  much  by  the 
mystery  of  new  lands  bosomed  in  the  beauty  cf  unknown 
seas.  Best  of  all,  these  motives  of  gain  and  of  Romance 
noble  adventure  were  infused  with  a  high  patriot-  and 
ism.  Englishmen  knew  that  in  building  their  own  pat 
fortunes  on  that  distant  frontier,  just  as  truly  as  when  they 
had  trod  the  deck  of  Drake's  ship,  they  were  widening  the 
power  of  the  little  home  island,  which  they  rightly  believed 
to  be  the  world's  best  hope.  Marston's  extravagant  sar 
casm  was  nobly  answered  by  Michael  Drayton's  Ode,  ad 
dressed  to  the  104  adventurers  just  setting  sail,  to  found 
Jamestown  the  next  spring  :  — 

1  A  passage  in  Crashaw's  "Daily  Prayer  for  Virginia  "  ran,  —  "Let  Papists 
and  Players  and  such  other  scum  and  dregs  of  the  earth,  —  let  them  mocke  such 
as  helpe  to  build  the  walls  'of  Jerusalem  ! " 


22  EARLY  VIRGINIA 

You  brave  heroique  minds, 

Worthy  your  countries  name, 

That  honour  still  pursue, 

Goe,  and  subdue, 

Whilst  loyt'ring  hinds 

Lurk  here  at  home  with  shame. 

***** 

And  cheerefully  at  sea, 

Successe  you  still  intice, 

To  get  the  pearle  and  gold, 

And  ours  to  hold, 

Virginia, 

Earth's  only  Paradise. 

***** 

And  in  regions  farre, 

Such  heroes  bring  yee  forth 

As  those  frorii  whom  yee  came ; 

And  plant  our  name 

Under  that  starre 

Not  knowne  unto  our  north  ! 

II.    VIRGINIA   A   PROPRIETARY   COLONY,    1607-1624 

When  James  I  granted  the  charter  of  1606  (p.  17)  to 
the  enterprising  merchants  who  wished  to  undertake 
The  Charter  founding  colonies  in  America,  the  stockholders 
of  1606  were  divided  into  two  subcompanies  :  the  London 
Company,  made  up  mainly  of  Londoners  ;  and  the  Plymouth 
Company,  made  up  of  gentlemen  from  the  west  of  England. 

The  name  Virginia  then  applied  to  the  whole  region 
claimed  by  England  on  the  Atlantic  coast,  between  the 
Territorial  Spaniards  on  the  south  and  the  French  on  the 
grants  north.  This  made  a  tract  about  800  miles  long, 

reaching  from  the  34th  to  the  45th  parallel.  Within  this 
territory,  each  Company  was  to  have  a  district  100  miles 
along  the  coast  and  100  miles  inland.  The  exact  location 
of  these  grants  was  to  be  fixed  by  the  position  of  the  first 
settlements.  The  Londoners  were  to  choose  anywhere  be 
tween  the  34th  and  the  41st  parallel  (or  between  Cape  Fear 


THE  LIBERTIES  OF  ENGLISHMEN  23 

and  the  Hudson) .  The  western  merchants  were  to  place  their 
settlement  anywhere  between  the  38th  and  the  45th  parallel 
(between  the  Potomac  and  Maine) .  Neither  Company  was 
to  plant  a  colony  within  a  hundred  miles  of  one  established 
by  the  other.  This  arrangement  left  the  middle  district,  from 
the  Potomac  to  the  Hudson,  open  to  whichever  Company 
should  first  occupy  it.  Probably  the  King's  intention  was 


VIRGINIA 

in  1606-1608 

Southern  Virginia  (London  Conipany) 
.Northern  Virginia  (Plymouth  Company') 
Open  to  either  Company 


to  encourage  rivalry ;  but,  naturally,  the  dubious  overlap 
ping  region  was  avoided  by  both  parties.  There  was  room 
for  six  of  the  100-mile  locations  outside  of  it. 

The  two  proprietary  Companies  were  expected  to  remain 
in  England.     To  the  settlers  themselves  the  charter  gave 
no  share  in  their  own  government ;    but  it  did  The 
promise  them  "the  liberties,  franchises,  and  im-  "liberties 
munities"  of  Englishmen.     This  much  misunder- 
stood  clause  (found  also  in  Gilbert's  and  in  nearly 
all  later  charters)   did  not  mean  "the  right  to  vote"   or 


24  EARLY  VIRGINIA 

to  hold  office :  not  all  Englishmen  had  such  privileges  at 
home.  It  meant  such  rights  as  jury  trial,  habeas  corpus 
privileges,  and  free  speech,  —  so  far  as  those  rights  were 
then  understood  in  England. 

The  plan  of  government  was  clumsy.  In  England  there 
was  to  be  a  Council  for  the  double  company,  with  general 
oversight.  In  each  colony  there  was  to  be  a  lower 
factory  plan  Council  appointed  by  that  higher  Council.  These 
for  govern-  local  Councils  were  to  govern  the  settlers  accord 
ing  to  laws  to  be  drawn  up  by  the  King.  Thus 
the  government  was  partly  royal  and  partly  proprietary, 
without  a  clear  division  between  the  authorities  in  England ; 
while  in  the  colonies  there  was  no  single  governor,  but  only 
unwieldy  committees.  The  "Instructions"  drawn  up  by 
James  before  the  first  expedition  sailed  kept  loyally  to  the 
spirit  of  the  charter.  They  provided  that  death  or  mutila 
tion  could  be  inflicted  upon  no  offender  until  after  conviction 
by  a  jury,  and  for  only  a  small  number  of  crimes,  for  that 
day,  though  the  appointed  Council  were  to  punish  minor 
offenses,  such  as  idling  and  drunkenness,  at  their  discretion, 
by  whipping  or  imprisonment  (authority  much  like  that 
possessed  then  by  the  appointed  justices  of  an  English 
county) . 

Under  this  crude  grant  was  founded  the  first  permanent 
English  colony.  In  1607  the  Plymouth  Company  made  a 
fruitless  attempt  at  settlement  on  the  coast  of 
Maine  (p.  3),  and  then  remained  inactive  for 
twelve  years.  But  in  December  of  1606  the  London  Com 
pany  sent  out,  in  three  small  vessels,  a  more  successful  expedi 
tion  to  "southern  Virginia."  The  104  colonists  reached  the 
Chesapeake  in  the  spring  of  1607,  and  planted  Jamestown  on 
the  banks  of  a  pleasant  river  flowing  into  the  south  side  of 
the  Bay.  They  chose  this  site  some  thirty  miles  up  the 
stream  to  avoid  Spanish  attack  from  the  sea.  For  some 
years  this  was  the  only  regular  settlement. 

Jamestown  was  a  great  "plantation."  The  company  of 
stockholders  in  England  were  proprietors.  They  directed 


THE  "  PLANTATION  "  AT  JAMESTOWN 


the  enterprise,  selected  settlers,  appointed  officers,  furnished 
transportation  and  supplies  and  capital  —  much  like  a  lumber 
company  in  New  York  or  Minneapolis  that  sends  A  "  pianta- 
its  woodsmen  into  our  Northern  woods.     The  col-  tion  colony  " 
onists  were  employees  and  servants.     They  did  the  work,  - 
cleared  forests,  built  rude  forts  and  towns,  and  raised  crops, 
—  facing  disease,  famine,  and  savage  warfare.     The  manag 
ing  Council  at  Jamestown  were  not  so  much  political  rulers 


ADccIaranon  forthe  certaine  timeof  drawingthe  great  (landing  Lottery. 


partnt  to  tftt  IW»U>.  by  Ijatt  B 
:mcri5Bi>hrationsBKraam  s 
rmtcnts  toliatit  Djauntf  oat .« r° *£.  **«* 


ffflrtonr 

tlTtg-rcat  Hanoing  lottcric  longfe;  ft 
f<w  tins  WfrWjKtl  hot  f  aUing  out  as  * 
oiiv  fflut*  DtftrcB,  ano  othrrs  nve- 
ttfO,  tthoff  m<mn't»  aw  atrraSvaD- 


anti  Onitttr  t 


ffolur  tiK  * 


lunturt  nstiw  pssmS*  toiOiiUiiigs  o;  6ptt«rtnfbe 
pitafr  Joltajit  j  inmt  Ins  p:t?cs  snB  i>ca>art>».  btc 
rftcv  «OK  K  itCV  .tftc  »  ottf  trbmii?  ^%3U»<  ewt.  titf 
lKlsof  aairntwi  »  Wop**,  foulKliKr 
ilviilbrfrtf  offiiatCowyanv  i 


!i;»  atwtwuKOf  -. 
|}RUuigso:t>pUi3r»s. 

Wfiofocurr  is  tifimioc  lint  It  titr  varama  rf  a 
ef  monrr.p:<mu!  -  ^s;t  nmrcD 


PROCLAMATION  OF  A  VIRGINIA  LOTTERY,  February  22,  1615,  to  raise  funds  for  the 
Company's  use.  The  original  belongs  to  the  Society  of  Antiquaries  of  London. 
The  two  sides  of  the  Seal  of  Virginia  are  shown  in  the  squares. 

as  industrial  overseers.     Their  task  was  a  kind  of  house 
keeping  on  a  large  scale. 

The  products  of  the  settlers'  labor  went  into  a  common 
stock.     Lumber,  sassafras,  dyestuffs,  were  shipped  to  the 
Company  to  help  meet  expenses.     Grain  was  kept  industry  in 
in  colonial   storehouses,   to  be  guarded  and   dis-  common 
tributed  by  a  public  official.     Here,  too,  were  kept  the  sup 
plies  from  England,  —  medicines,  clothing,  furniture,  tools, 
arms  and  ammunition,  seeds,  stock  cf  all  kinds  for  breeding, 
and  such  articles  of  food  as  meal,  bread,  butter,  cheese,  salt, 
meat,  and  preserved  fruits.     For  many  years  the  existence 


26  EARLY  VIRGINIA 

of  the  colony  depended  on  the  prompt  arrival,  every  few 
months,  of  a  "supply";  and  the  colonists  measured  time 
by  dating  from  "the  First  Supply,"  or  "the  Third  Supply." 

The  system  of  "industry  in  common"  has  frequently 
been  called  an  experiment  in  communism.  In  reality  it  was 
no  more  communism  than  was  a  Virginia  slave  plantation 
in  1850.  The  London  Company  would  have  been  the  last 
men  to  approve  any  theory  of  communism.  The  common 
industry  and  undivided  profits  were  simply  clumsy  features 
of  management  by  a  distant  proprietary  company. 

The  opening  days  of  the  colony  promised  an  endless 
summer  idyl  to  the  inexperienced  adventurers.  "That 
Early  ex-  very  Honorable  Gentleman,  Master  George 
pectations  Percy,"  as  John  Smith  afterward  calls  him,  has 
left  us  a  record  of  his  first  impressions :  - 

.  .  .  The  six  and  twentieth  day  of  Aprill  about  foure  a  clocke 
in  the  morning,  wee  descried  the  Land  of  Virginia :  the  same  day 
wee  enterd  into  the  Bay  of  Chesupioc  without  any  let  or  hinder- 
ance ;  there  wee  landed  and  discovered  a  little  way,  but  we  could 
find  nothing  worth  the  speaking  of  but  faire  meddowes  and  goodly 
tall  Trees,  with  such  Fresh-waters  runninge  through  the  woods  as 
I  was  almost  ravished  at  the  first  sight  thereof.  .  .  . 

The  [28th]  day  .  .  .  we  went  further  into  the  Bay,  and  saw 
a  plaine  [level]  plot  of  ground  where  we  went  on  Land  .  .  .  we 
saw  nothing  there  but  a  Cannow,  which  was  made  out  of  the  whole 
tree,  which  was  five  and  fortie  foot  long,  by  the  Rule.  Upon  this 
plot  of  ground  we  got  good  store  of  Mussels  and  Oysters,  which 
lay  upon  the  ground  as  thicke  as  stones  :  wee  opened  some  and 
found  in  many  of  them  Pearles  [!]...  We  passed  through 
excellent  ground  full  of  Flowers  of  divers  kinds  and  colours,  and 
as  goodly  trees  as  I  have  scene,  as  cedar,  cipresse,  and  other  kindes. 
Going  a  little  farther,  we  came  into  a  little  plot  full  of  fine  and 
beautifull  strawberries,  foure  times  bigger  and  better  than  ours  in 
England. 

But  the  location  of  Jamestown  was  low  and  unhealthful ; 
the  committee  government  was  not  suited  to  vigorous 
action ;  and  only  the  stern  school  of  experience  could  teach 


DISAPPOINTMENT  AND  SUFFERING  27 

men  in  that  day  how  to  colonize  an  unknown  continent. 
The  early  years  were  a  time  of  cruel  suffering.     The  first 
summer  saw  two  thirds  of  the  settlers  perish,  while  Years  of 
much   of   the   time   the   rest   were   helpless   with  cruel 
fever.      The    closing    pages    of    Captain    Percy's  s 
Discourse  tell  the  story  :  - 

Our  men  were  destroyed  by  cruel  1  diseases  .  .  .  and  by  warres 
[with  the  Indians] ;  and  some  departed  suddenly,  but  for  the 
most  part  they  died  of  meere  famine.  There  were  never  English 
men  left  in  a  forreigne  Country  in  such  miserie  as  wee  were.  .  . 
Our  feed  was  but  a  small  can  of  Barlie,  sod  in  Water,  to  five  men 
a  day ;  our  drinke,  cold  Water  taken  out  of  the  River,  which  was 
at  flood  verie  Salt,  at  a  low  tide  full  of  slime  and  filth  .  .  .  Thus 
we  lived  for  the  space  of  five  months  in  this  miserable  distresse, 
not  having  five  able  men  to  man  our  Bulwarkes  .  .  .  our  men 
night  and  day  groaning  in  every  corner  of  the  Fort  most  pittiful  to 
heare  .  .  .  some  departing  out  of  the  World,  many  times  three 
or  four  in  a  night,  in  the  morning  their  bodies  trailed  out  of  their 
Cabines,  like  Dogges,  to  be  burried. 

The  First  Supply,  in  the  fall  of  1607,  found  only  38  survivors, 
and  for  20  years  each  new  immigration  lost,  on  an  average, 
half  its  members  the  first  season, 

From  one  peril  the  colony  was  saved  by  its  very  misery. 
Spain  watched  jealously  this  intrusion  into  a  region  which 
she  claimed  as  her  own,  and  the  government  con-  The  Spanish 
templated  an  attack  upon  Jamestown.  In  partic-  Peril 
ular,  the  Spanish  ambassador  at  London  urged  his  king  re 
peatedly  to  have  "those  insolent  people  in  Virginia  annihi 
lated."  "It  will  be  serving  God,"  he  wrote,  "to  drive  these 
villains  out  and  hang  them."  But  the  Spanish  spies  in  the 
colony  reported  that  it  must  fall  of  itself ;  and  the  dilatory 
Spanish  government,  already  slipping  into  decay  and  un 
willing  needlessly  to  make  King  James  an  enemy,  failed 
to  act. 

The  most  interesting  figure  during  the  first  three  years  was 
the  burly,  bustling,  bragging,  efficient  Captain  John  captain 
Smith.     Smith  finally  became  President  of  the  in-  John  Smith 
effective  Council.     Then  he  quickly  usurped  all  the  power 


EARLY  VIRGINIA 


of  government,  and  his  beneficent  tyranny  saved  the  colony 
from  ruin.  In  1609,  however,  he  was  injured  by  an  explosion 
of  gunpowder,  and  went  back  to  England.  The  next  winter 
was  "  The  Starving  Time."  A  special  effort  had  been  made, 
the  summer  before,  to  reinforce  the  colony ;  and  in  the  fall 
the  number  of  settlers  had  risen  to  more  than  three  hundred. 
Spring  found  only  sixty  gaunt  survivors.  These  had  em 
barked  to  abandon  the  colony,  with  slight  chance 

The  colony         £     £ 

saved  by        oi  lite  whether    

Delaware's      tney    went    or 
arrival,  1610  , 

stayed,  when 
they  met  Lord  Dela 
ware,  the  new  governor, 
with  a  fleet  bringing  re 
inforcements  and  sup 
plies.  Had  Delaware 
been  later  by  three  days, 
Jamestown  would  have 
been  another  failure,  to 
count  with  Raleigh's  at 
Roanoke. 

Meantime,    the    year 
1609  had  seen  a  remark- 

The  charters    able    Outburst 

of  1609  and  of  enthusiasm 
in  England  in 
behalf  of  the  sinking 
colony.  Sermons  and 
pamphlets  appealed  to 
the  patriotism  of  the 
nation  not  to  let  this 
new  England  perish. 

The  list  of  the  Company's  stockholders  was  greatly  multi 
plied,  and  came  to  include  the  most  famous  names  in 
England,  along  with  good  men  from  all  classes  of  society ;  l 
and  this  enlarged  London  Company  received  enlarged  powers 

1  Cf.  p.  19.     Each  of  the  650  subscribers  bought  from  one  to  ten  shares  of  stock, 
at  £12  10  s.  a  share,  or  about  $400  a  share  in  our  values. 


CAPTAIN  JOHN  SMITH.  From  the  woodcut  by 
Smith  in  the  corner  of  his  map  of  New  Eng 
land  in  his  Generall  Historic.  Smith's  rhym 
ing  inscription  below  the  picture  refers  to  his 
"deeds  more  fair"  than  his  face. 


THE  TIME  OF  SLAVERY 


THE  TWO  POSSIBLE 

VIRGINIAS 

OF  1C09 


through  two  new  charters  in  1609  and  1612.     Three  things 

were  accomplished  by  these  grants :  - 

1.    The  territory  of  the  Company  was  extended.     It  was 

made  to  reach  along  the  coast  each  way  200  miles  from  Point 

Comfort,  and  "up  into  the  land  throughout  from  sea  to  sea, 

west  and  northwest" 

%.    The  authority  before  kept  by  the  king  was  now  turned 

over  to  the  Company ;   and  that  body  received  a  democratic 

organization.  It  was  to  elect 
its  own  ''Treasurer"  and 
Council  (President  and  Direc 
tors,  in  modern  phrase),  and 
to  rule  the  colony  in  all  re 
spects. 

3.  A  more  efficient  govern 
ment  was  provided  in  the 
colony.  There  was  no  hint 
yet  of  ^//-government.  The 
Company  in  England  made 
all  laws  and  appointed  all 
officers  for  the  colony.  But 
the  inefficient  plural  head  in 
the  colony,  with  its  divisions 
and  jealousies,  was  replaced 
by  one  "principal,  governor" 
with  a  Council  to  assist  him. 

Virginia    had    left    anarchy 
behind,  but  she  had  not  reached 
liberty.     The    Com-  The  rule 
pany  continued  the  °*Pal?: 

si  .•        99       i  "the  time  of 

plantation      plan;  slavery," 
and    from    1611    to  len-ieie 
1616  its  chief  officer  in  Virginia  was  Sir  Thomas  Dale.     This 
stern  soldier  put  in  force  a  military  government,  with  a 
savage  set  of  laws  known  as  Dale's  Code.     Among  other  pro 
visions,  these  laws  compelled  attendance  at  divine  worship 
daily,  under  penalty  of  six  months  in  the  galleys,  and  on 
Sundays  on  pain  of  death  for  repeated  absence.     Death  was 


L.U  POATES  EN3.  CO.,* 


This  map  shows  two  possible  interpre 
tations  of  this  clumsy  "northwest" 
phrase.  The  Virginians  themselves 
had  no  trouble  in  deciding  which  to 
insist  upon.  Probably  the  words 
"west  and  northwest"  were  used 
vaguely,  with  the  meaning  "toward 
the  western  ocean,"  which  was  sup 
posed  to  lie  rather  to  the  northwest. 


30  EARLY  VIRGINIA 

the  penalty  also  for  repeated  blasphemy,  for  "speaking  evil 
of  any  known  article  of  the  Christian  faith,"  for  refusing  to 
answer  the  catechism  of  a  clergyman,  and  for  neglecting 
work.  The  military  courts,  too,  made  use  of  ingeniously 
atrocious  punishments,  such  as  burning  at  the  stake,  break 
ing  on  the  wheel,  or  leaving  bound  to  a  tree  to  starve,  with 
a  bodkin  thrust  through  the  tongue.  These  years  of 
tyranny  were  long  remembered  as  "the  time  of  slavery," 
with  a  government  "very  bloody  and  severe  ...  in  no 
wise  agreeable  to  a  free  people  or  to  the  British  consti 
tution."  Dale,  however,  was  conscientious  and  efficient, 
and  full  of  enthusiasm  for  Virginia.  "  Take  the  best  four 
kingdoms  of  Europe,"  he  wrote  home,  "and  put  them 
all  together,  and  they  may  no  way  compare  with  this 
country  for  commodity  and  goodness  of  soil."  Moreover, 
he  kept  order  and  protected  the  colony  from  the  Indians,  and 
in  1614  he  made  81  three-acre  allotments  of  land  to  private 
holders  —  a  small  garden  to  each  free  settler.  At  his  de 
parture,  in  1616,  the  colonists  numbered  351.  Of  these,  65 
were  women  or  children,  and  some  200  were  "servants." 

A  revolution  now  took  place  in  the  London  Company. 
That  body  had  split  into  factions.  The  part  so  far  in  control 
Sandys  in  was  conservative,  and  belonged  to  the  "court 
England  party"  in  English  politics;  but  toward  the  close 
of  1618,  control  passed  to  a  liberal  and  Puritan  faction,  led 
by  the  Earl  of  Southampton  and  Sir  Edwin  Sandys.  Since 
these  patriots  were  struggling  gallantly  in  parliament  against 
And  TGng  James'  arbitrary  rule,  it  was  not  unnatural 

Yeardiey  in  that  they  should  at  once  grant  a  large  measure  of 
self-government  to  the  Englishmen  across  the 
Atlantic,  over  whom  they  themselves  ruled.  Sir  George 
Yeardiey  was  sent  out  as  governor,  and  a  new  era  began  in 
Virginia. 

With  Yeardley's  arrival,  in  April,  1619,  the  number  of 
colonists  was  raised  to  about  a  thousand.  They  were  still, 
mainly,  indentured  servants  (p.  19),  and  were  distributed 
among  eleven  petty  "plantations,"  -mere  patches  on  the 
wilderness,  —  scattered  along  a  narrow  ribbon  of  territory, 


THE  FIRST  REPRESENTATIVE  ASSEMBLY  31 

nowhere  more  than  six  miles  wide,  curving  up  the  James  for 
a  hundred  miles.  Industry  was  still  in  common,  except  for 
the  slight  beginning  of  private  tillage  under  Dale;  and 
martial  law  was  still  the  prevailing  government. 

According  to  his  instructions  Yeardley  at  once  introduced 
three  great  reforms. 

1.  He  established  private  ownership,  giving  liberal  grants 
of  land  to  all  free  immigrants.     A  large  part  of  the  settlers 
continued  for  some  time  to  be  "servants"  of  the  private 
Company,  and  these  were  employed  as  before  on  ownership 
the  Company's  land.     But  each   of   the  old  free  planters 
now  received  100  acres ;  each  servant  was  given  the  same 
amount  when  his  term  of  service  expired ;    and  each  new 
planter  thereafter  was  to  receive  50  acres  for  himself  and  as 
much  more  for  each  servant  he  brought  with  him.     Grants 
of  many  hundred  acres  were  made,  too,  to  men  who  rendered 
valuable  service  to  the  colony.     For  many  years,  all  grants 
were  in  strips  fronting  on  rivers  up  which  ships  could  ascend. 

2.  Dale's  code  of  martial  law  was  set  aside.     Yeardley 
proclaimed,  said  a  body  of  settlers  later,  "that  those  cruel! 
lawes  by  which  we  had  soe  lomje  been  governed 

A  return  to 

were  abrogated,  and  that  we  were  now  to  be  gov-  the  promises 
erned  by  those  free  lawes  which  his  Majesties  sub-  of  the 

T  i        •      TI      i        i     st       mi  •  i       charters 

jects  live  under  in  Jbnglande.        1ms  was  merely 
to  keep  the  pledge  of  the  charters. 

3.  The  settlers  received  a  share  in  the  government.     A 
Representative   Assembly    was    summoned,    "freely    to   be 
elected    by   the    inhabitants,   ...  to   make    and  Representa- 
ordaine  whatsoever  lawes  and  orders  should  by  tive  govem- 
them    be   thought    good    and    profitable."     This  T 
political  privilege  was  a  new  thing. 

The   First   Representative  Assembly   in   America   met   at 
Jamestown,  August  9  (New  Style),  1619.     It  was  not  purely 
representative.     Each  of  the  eleven  plantations  The  As_ 
sent   two  delegates;   but   in  the    same    "House"  sembiy  of 
with  these  elected  "Burgesses"  sat  the  governor 
and   his    Council    (seven   or   eight   in    number),    appointed 


32  EARLY  VIRGINIA 

from  England.  We  have  no  account  of  the  elections. 
No  doubt  they  were  extremely  informal.  Of  the  thousand 
people  in  the  colony,  seven  hundred  must  have  been 
"servants"  without  a  vote;  and,  of  the  three  hundred 
free  persons,  a  fraction  were  women  and  children.  Probably 
there  were  not  more  than  two  hundred  voters.  These 
were  distributed  among  eleven  plantations,  in  some  of  which 
the  only  voters  must  have  been  the  foreman  and  employees 
of  a  rich  proprietor. 

The  Assembly  opened  with  prayer,  and  slipped  with  amaz 
ing  ease  into  the  forms  of  an  English  parliament.  It  "veri 
fied  credentials"  of  the  delegates,  and  it  gave  all  bills  "three 
readings."  Laws  which  to-day  would  be  stigmatized  as 
"Blue  Laws"  were  passed  against  drunkenness,  gambling, 
idleness,  absence  from  church,  "excess  in  apparel,"  and  other 
misdemeanors.  For  that  age,  the  penalties  were  light.  The 
Church  of  England  was  made  the  established  church;  and 
aid  was  asked  from  the  Company  toward  setting  up  a  college. 
With  all  this  business,  the  Assembly  sat  only  six  days. 

This  beginning  of  representative  government  in  the 
wilderness  has  a  simple  grandeur  and  a  striking  signifi- 
And  its  cance.  Virginia  had  been  transformed  from  a 
significance  "plantation  colony,"  ruled  by  a  despotic  over 
seer,  into  a  self-governing  political  community.  The  pioneers 
manifested  an  instinct  and  fitness  for  representative  gov 
ernment,  a  zest  for  it,  and  a  deep  sense  of  its  value.  It 
came  as  a  gift;  but,  once  given,  it  could  not  be  withdrawn.1 
Jury  trial  and  representative  government  were  both  estab 
lished  upon  a  lasting  foundation  in  America  in  1619,  while 
Virginia  was  the  only  English  colony.  These  two  bulwarks 

1  Many  American  writers  speak  as  though  the  colonists  had  created  the  Assembly. 
Thomas  Hutchinson  (History  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  94,  note)  said  that  in  1619 
representative  government  "broke  out"  in  Virginia;  and  Story,  in  his  great 
Commentaries  on  the  Constitution  (I,  §  166),  said  that  the  Assembly  was 
"forced  upon  the  proprietors"  by  the  colonists.  Influenced  by  such  earlier  au 
thorities,  John  Fiske  (Old  Virginia,  I,  186)  explains  the  Assembly  on  the  ground 
that  "the  people  called  for  self-government."  But  this  view  is  contrary  to  all 
evidence.  For  a  good  statement,  see  Channing,  United  States,  I,  204.  For  the 
ardor,  however,  with  which  the  settlers  maintained  the  privilege,  in  contrast  to 
French  indifference,  see  pp.  37-39  below. 


PATERNALISM  33 

of  freedom  were  not  then  known  in  any  large  country 
except  in  England  ;  and  they  were  not  to  take  root  in 
the  colonies  of  any  other  country  for  more  than  two  hun 
dred  years.  Their  establishment  in  Virginia  made  them 
inevitable  in  all  other  English  colonies. 

A  charter  to  the  settlers  established  still  more  firmly  the 
grant  of  self-government.     Yeardley  put  before  the  Assembly 
a    long    document    from    the    Company.       The  The  l(  char 
Assembly  called  it  a  "Great  Charter,"  and  ex-  terofieis" 
amined  it  carefully,  "because  [it]  is  to  binde  us  to  the 
and  our  heyers  forever."     This  "charter  of 


has  been  lost,  but  the  Assembly's  Records  show  that  it 
guaranteed  a  representative  Assembly.  It  was  wholly 
different  from  royal  grants  to  proprietors  in  England  : 
it  was  the  first  of  many  charters  and  "concessions"  issued 
by  the  proprietors  of  various  colonies  to  settlers  in  America, 
in  order  to  set  up  ideals  of  government  or  to  attract  settlers. 
From  this  time  it  became  customary  for  colonial  proprietors, 
when  circulating  handbills  in  England  advertising  the 
features  of  their  American  possessions,  to  lay  stress  upon 
the  guarantee  of  political  privileges. 

The  new  management  of  the  Company  bestirred  itself 
to   build   up    the   colony   on   the   material   side   also.     To 
supply  the  labor  so  much  needed,   Sandys   (the 
"Treasurer,"    or    President)    sought    throughout  care  by  the 
England  for  skilled  artisans  and  husbandmen,  and  Company  in 
shipped  to  Virginia  many  hundred   "servants." 
Several  cargoes  of  young  women,  too,  were  induced  to  go 
out   for   wives   to  the   settlers,    and    supplies   of  all   kinds 
were  poured  into  the  colony  with  a  lavish  hand. 

This  generous  paternalism  was  often  unwise.  Effort  and 
money  were  wasted  in  trying  to  produce  glass,  silk,  and  wine, 
—  so  that  England  might  no  longer  have  to  buy  such  com 
modities  from  foreigners  —  while  the  main  industry  that  was 
to  prove  successful,  tobacco  raising,  had  to  win  its  way 
against  the  Company's  frowns.  Moreover,  pestilence  and 
hardship  continued  to  kill  off  a  terrible  proportion  of  the 


34  EARLY  VIRGINIA 

people.  In  the  first  three  years  after  Yeardley's  arrival, 
more  than  three  thousand  new  settlers  landed ;  but  in 
March,  1622,  of  the  population  old  and  new,  only  some 
twelve  hundred  survived,  and  that  spring  an  Indian  massacre 
swept  away  a  third  of  that  little  band. 

In  spite  of  all  this,  Virginia  became  prosperous  under  the 
Company's  rule.  Two  years  after  the  massacre,  the  popula 
tion  had  risen  again  to  twelve  hundred,  and  the  number  of 
settlements  had  become  nineteen.  The  Indians  had  been 
crushed.  Fortunes  were  being  made  in  tobacco, 
and  the  homes  of  the  colonists  were  taking  on 
colony  self-  an  ajr  of  comfort.  The  period  of  experiment 
was  past,  and  the  era  of  rapid  growth  had  just 
been  reached.  During  the  following  ten  years  (1624-1634) 
the  population  grew  fourfold,  to  more  than  five  thousand 
people,  organized  in  eight  counties. 

Tobacco  for  export  was  first  grown  in  1614,  on  the  planta 
tion  of  John  Rolfe,  who  had  married  the  Indian  girl  Poca- 
hontas.  The  Company  always  discouraged  its  cultivation 
-  on  moral  as  well  as  business  grounds.  Smoking  was 
looked  upon  much  as  indulgence  in  liquor  is  now.  King 
James  wrote  a  tract  against  the  practice,  and  even  later 
King  Charles  warned  the  Virginians  not  to  "build  on 
smoke."  Tobacco,  however,  found  a  steady  sale  in  Europe 
at  high  prices ;  and  before  1624  Virginians  knew  they  had 
found  a  paying  industry.  Thereafter  the  colony  needed 
no  coddling. 

Meanwhile  King  James  became  bitterly  hostile  to  the  liberal 
management  of  the  Company.  Sandys  was  particularly 
King  James  obnoxious.  He  was  prominent  in  parliament  in 
and  Sandys  opposing  the  King's  arbitrary  policy,  and  was 
reported  to  be  "the  king's  greatest  enemye."  More  than 
once  he  had  been  committed  to  custody  by  royal  order.  An 
envious  business  associate  testified  that  "there  was  not  any 
man  in  the  world  that  carried  a  more  malitious  hearte  to  the 
government  of  a  Monarchic  than  Sir  Edwin  Sandys  did," 
and  that  Sandys  had  said  repeatedly  that  he  "aymed  .  .  . 
to  make  a  free  popular  state  there  [in  Virginia]  in  which  the 


KING  JAMES  ATTACKS  THE  LIBERAL  COMPANY       35 


people  should  have  noe  government  putt  upon  them  but 
by  their  owne  consents." 

When  Sandys'  term  expired,  in  1620,  King  James  sent 
to  the  "General  Court"  of  the  Company  the  names  of  four 
men  from  whom  he  ordered  them  to  elect  a  new 
Treasurer.       The   Company    (some   hundreds   of  tempts  to 
the  best  gentlemen  of  England  present)  remon- 
strated  firmly  against  this  interference  with  the 
freedom    of    election    guaranteed    by    their    charter;     and 


A  COVNTERBLASTE 

TO    TOBACCO. 

Hat  the  manifold  abufes  of  this  vile  cu- 
ilome  of  Tobacc  staking,  may  the  better  be 
efpiedjit  is  fit,  that  firit  you  enter  into  con- 
fideration  both  of  the  firrt  originall  thereof, 
andlikewifc  of  the  reafons  ojf  the  firlt  entry 
thereof  into  this  Countrcy.  Forccrtainely 
asfuchcurtomes,  that  haue  their  firit  infti- 
tution  either  from  a  godly,  neceflary,or  ho- 
nourable  ground ,  and  are  firit  brought  in, 
^  by  themeanes  offbme  worthy,  vertuous, 

and  great  Perfonage,are  eue^andmoll  iu(My,holden  in  great  and  reucrent 
eftimation  and  account,  by  all  wife,  vertuous,  and  temperate  (pints ;  So 
mould  it  by  thecontrary ,  iuftly  bringagrear  difgraceinto  that  fort  ofcu- 


BEGINNING  OF  KING  JAMES'  TRACT  :  a  facsimile  from  his  Complete  Works,  London, 

1616. 

James  yielded,  exclaiming  petulantly,  "Choose  the  Devil, 
an  ye  will;  only  not  Sir  Edwin  Sandys!"  Sandys  then 
withdrew  his  name ;  and  the  Company  sent  a  committee 
to  his  friend,  the  Earl  of  Southampton,1  the  liberal  leader 

1  This  was  Shakspere's  Southampton,  of  course. 


36  EARLY  VIRGINIA 

in  the  House  of  Lords,  to  inquire  whether  he  would 
accept  the  office.  Southampton  was  little  more  to  the 
royal  taste.  "I  know  the  King  will  be  angry,"  said  he  to 
his  friends,  "but,  so  this  pious  and  .  .  .  glorious  work  be 
encouraged,  let  the  Company  do  with  me  as  they  think 
good."  Then,  "surceasing  the  ballot,"  the  meeting  elected 
him  "with  much  joy  and  applause,  by  erection  of  hands." 
Sandys  was  chosen  Deputy  Treasurer  and  remained  the 
real  manager. 

When  Southampton's  second  term  expired  (1622),  James 
again  sent  to  the  Court  of  Election  five  names.  It  would  be 
pleasing  to  him,  he  said,  if  the  Company  would  choose  a 
new  Treasurer  from  the  list ;  but  this  time  he  carefully 
disclaimed  any  wish  to  infringe  their  "liberty  of  free  elec 
tion."  The  Company  reflected  Southampton  by  1 17  ballots, 
to  a  total  of  20  for  the  King's  nominees.  Then  they  sent  a 
committee  to  thank  James  "with  great  reverence"  for  his 
"gracious  remembrance"  and  for  his  "regard  for  their 
liberty  of  election!"  It  is  reported  that  the  King  "flung 
away  in  a  furious  passion."  Small  wonder  that  he  listened 
to  the  sly  slur  of  the  Spanish  ambassador,  who  called  the 
London  Company's  General  Court  "the  seminary  for  a 
seditious  parliament." 

Since  James  could  not  secure  control  of  the  Company,  he 
decided  to  overthrow  it.  A  revival  of  the  old  factions  within 
The  King's  ^'  an(^  ^he  Indian  massacre  of  1622  in  Virginia, 
courts  furnished  a  pretext.  James  sent  commissioners 

the^mUm  to  tne  c°l°nv>  to  gather  further  information  un- 
Company  favorable  to  the  Company's  rule;  but  the  Vir 
ginians  supported  the  Company  ardently  and 
made  petition  after  petition  to  the  King  in .  its  favor. 
The  Company  made  a  strong  defense,  and  the  charter 
could  be  revoked  only  by  a  legal  judgment.  Royal  in 
terference  with  the  courts  was  a  new  thing  in  England 
and  was  never  to  recur  after  Stuart  times.  But  Sir 
Edward  Coke,  the  great  chief  justice,  had  just  been  dis 
missed  from  office  by  James  for  refusing  to  consult  the  King's 
will  in  judicial  decisions,  and  for  a  time  the  English  courts 


BECOMES  A  ROYAL  PROVINCE,   1624  37 

were  basely  subservient  to  the  monarch.  Accordingly, 
in  16&4,  in  a  flimsy  case  against  the  London  Company,  the 
King's  lawyers  secured  judgment  that  the  charter  was  void. 

III.    THE    ASSEMBLY   SAVED:    1624-1660 

Virginia  had  become  a  Royal  Province.     To  the  A  Royal 
people  this  meant  three  things.  Province 

1.  Land  titles  from  the  Company  to  settlers  held  good. 
But  all  the  territory  still  owned  by  the  Company  at  its  fall 
became  crown    land    again.     Thereafter,    royal    governors 
made  grants  from  it  to  settlers  much  as  the  Company  had 
done.     Virginia  afterwards  frequently  claimed  its  "ancient 
bounds"  as  described  in  the  charter  of  1609.     That  grant, 
ho\vever,  was  made  to  the  Company  in  England,  and  not 
to  the  colony.     The  King  was  undoubtedly  within  his  rights 
when  he  soon  gave  part  of  the  old  grant  to  Lord  Baltimore 
for  the  colony  of  Maryland. 

2.  The  colony  now  had  to  support  itself.     In  fifteen  years 
the  London  Company  had  spent  five  million  dollars  upon 
it  —  without  return  to  the  stockholders  ;    and  most  Virgin 
ians  believed  that  without  such  fostering  the  enterprise  would 
sink.     In  the  next  four  years  the  settlers  sent  four  petitions 
to  the  King  for  aid.     One  of  them  runs,  in    part:     "The 
ground  work  of  all  is  that  there  must  bee  a  sufficient  publique 
stock  to  goe  through  with  soe  greate  a  worke ;   which  we  can 
not  compute  to  bee  lesse  than  £20,000  a  yeare.  .  .  .     For 
by  it  must  be  mainetayned  the  Governor  and  his  Counsell 
and  other  officers  heere,  the  forest  wonne  and  stocked  with 
cattle,    fortifications    raysed,    an    army    mainetayned,    dis 
coveries  mayde  by  sea  and  land,  and  all  other  things  req 
uisite    in    soe    mainefold  a  business."     But  the  King  was 
quarreling   with   parliament   about   money  enough   to   run 
the  government  at  home,  and  he  paid  no  attention  to  such 
prayers.     This  was  fortunate.     The  colony  found  that  it 
could  walk  alone. 

3.  Political  control  over  the  colonists  was  now  in  the  King's 
hands.     And,  as  the  colonists  feared  that  the  King  would  help 


38  VIRGINIA  A  ROYAL  PROVINCE 

too  little,  so,  with  more  reason,  they  feared  that  he  would 
govern  too  much.  Even  in  Old  England,  with  all  its  centuries 
The  danger  °^  traditions  for  representative  government,  and  de- 
of  royal  spite  dogged  and  heroic  opposition  from  parliament 
absolutism  af  j-er  parliament,  this  new  Stuart  monarch  seemed 
almost  to  have  made  into  fact  his  new  French  "Divine- 
Right"  theories  of  kingship.  How  then  could  this  little  hand 
ful  of  Englishmen  in  a  strange  land,  dependent  in  many  ways 
(as  they  thought)  on  the  King's  favor,  hope  to  maintain  their 
political  liberty,  now  that  they  had  lost  the  protection  of 
their  charter !  (The  overthrow  of  the  royal  charters  to  the 
London  Company  made  of  no  effect  the  Company's  Charter 
of  1618  to  the  Virginians.) 

Even  so,  the  Virginians  were  determined  to  save  their 
Representative  Assembly.  As  soon  as  it  became  plain  that 
The  struggle  the  Company  was  to  be  overthrown,  in  the  spring 
to  save  Of  1624,  a  body  of  leading  settlers  sent  to  the  King 
tiv^gov^n-  an  address  in  which  they  "humbly  entreat  .  .  . 
ment  that  the  Governors  [to  be  appointed  by  the  king] 

may  not  have  absolute  authority,  .  .  .  [and]  above  all  ... 
that  we  may  retayne  the  Liber  tie  of  our  General  Assemblie, 
than  which  nothing  can  more  conduce  to  our  satisfaction 
or  the  public  utilitie."  At  the  same  time  the  Assembly 
itself  solemnly  put  on  record  its  claim  to  control  taxation, 
,  in  a  memorable  enactment :  "  That  the  Governor 

The  law  of 

1624  "  NO  shall  lay  no  taxes  or  ympositions  upon  the  colony, 
without-1  its  lands  or  goods,  other  ivay  than  by  the  authority  of 
representa-  the  General  Assembly,  to  be  levied  and  ymployed 
as  the  said  Assembly  shall  appoynt"  This  was  the 
first  assertion  on  this  continent  of  the  ancient  English 
principle,  "No  taxation  without  representation." 

That  same  summer,  however,  King  James  began  his 
control  by  reappointing  the  old  governor  and  Council  in 
Virginia  and  giving  them  full  authority  to  rule  the  colony. 
The  instructions  to  these  officers  made  no  mention  of  an 
Assembly.  Indeed  James  planned  a  permanently  despotic 
government;  but  he  died  in  a  few  months  before  he  had 
completed  his  draft  of  a  "new  constitution"  for  Virginia. 


THE  FIGHT  TO  SAVE  THE  ASSEMBLY  39 

The  next  year  the  new  king,  Charles  I,  appointed  a  new 
governor  in  Virginia  with  instructions  like  those  used  the 
year  before  by  his  father,  and  still  with  no  reference  to  an 
Assembly ;  and  no  Assembly  met  for  five  years  (1624-1628). 

Still  the  colonists  kept  asking  for  one ;  and  in  1625  they 
sent  Yeardley  to  England  to  present  their  desires.  Yeardley 
told  the  royal  council  that  only  the  grant  of  an  Assembly 
could  allay  the  universal  distrust  in  Virginia,  where  "the 
people,  .  .  .  justly  fearing  to  fall  into  former  miseries, 
resolve  rather  to  seek  the  farthest  parts  of  the  World." 

Neither  this  threat  nor  other  petitions  met  with  any 
direct  answer.  In  1628  Charles  did  order  the  governor 
to  call  an  Assembly,  though  only  because  he  hoped,  vainly, 
to  persuade  it  to  grant  him  a  monopoly  of  the  profitable 
tobacco  trade.  Then  Charles  appointed  Sir  John  Harvey 
governor.  Harvey  belonged  to  the  court  faction  in  Eng 
land  ;  but  he  had  been  one  of  the  royal  commissioners  to 
Virginia  in  1623,  and  apparently  he  had  learned  there  that 
it  would  not  be  wise  to  try  to  rule  the  colony  without  an 
Assembly.  His  commission  from  Charles  made  no  mention 
of  one ;  but,  in  1629,  before  leaving  England,  he  drew  up  for 
the  King's  consideration  a  list  of  seven  "Propositions  touch 
ing  Virginia,"  and  one  of  these  asked  for  a  represent-  The  Vir- 
ative  Assembly  as  part  of  the  government.  The  King  si™*™  win 
seems  to  have  been  influenced  by  this  request  from  the 
courtier-governor  more  than  by  the  petitions  of  the  colony. 
He  was  just  entering  upon  his  eleven-year  period  of  "No 
Parliament"  in  England,  but,  in  his  answer  to  Harvey,  he 
approved  an  Assembly  for  Virginia. 

With  this  sanction,  the  Assembly  continued  regularly  ;  and 
formal  directions  to  call  Assemblies  became  a  part  of  each 
future  governor's  instructions.  The  change  from  a  pro 
prietary  colony  to  a  royal  colony,  then,  did  not  make  political 
liberty  less.  The  Stuart  kings  were  so  involved  in  quarrels 
at  home  that  they  had  little  time  to  give  to  a  distant  colony ; 
and  Virginia  was  left  to  develop  with  less  interference  than 
it  would  have  had  from  the  most  liberal  proprietary  com 
pany.  The  London  Company  had  planted  constitutional 


40  VIRGINIA   UNDER  THE  COMMONWEALTH 

liberty  in  America;  the  settlers  clung  to  it  devotedly ;  and  the 
careless  royal  government  found  it  easier  to  use  the  institution 
than  to  uproot  it. 

The  Virginians  had  dreaded  Harvey's  coming.  Despite 
his  "proposition"  for  an  Assembly,  he  was  known  as  a 
Sir  John  supporter  of  arbitrary  rule.  And  so,  soon  after 
Harvey  "and  his  arrival,  the  Assembly  of  1632  reenacted,  word 
I  the  mu-  jor  Word,  the  great  law  of  1624  regarding  representa 
tion  and  taxation.  Harvey  clashed  continually 
with  the  settlers,  and  complained  bitterly  to  the  authorities 
in  England  about  the  "selfwilled  government"  in  Virginia. 
Finally,  he  tried  to  arrest  some  of  his  Council  for  "treason." 
Instead,  the  Council  and  Assembly  "thrust  him  out  of  his 
government,"  sent  him  prisoner  to  England,  and  chose  a 
new  governor  in  his  place.  This  was  the- mutiny  of  1635. 

Two  years  later,  the  King  restored  Harvey  for  a  time ; 
but  replaced  him,  in  1639,  by  the  liberal  Wyatt.*  Then,  in 
Sir  William  1641,  Sir  William  Berkeley  was  sent  over  as  gov- 
Berkeiey's  ernor.  He  had  been  an  ardent  royalist  in  England  ; 
governor-  so  ms  ^rs^  Assembly  enacted  verbatim,  for  the 
ship,  1641-  third  time,  the  law  of  1624  regarding  taxa 
tion.  Berkeley  ruled,  however,  with  much  moder 
ation,  keeping  in  touch  with  the  Assembly  and  showing 
no  promise  of  the  tyranny  which  was  to  mark  his  second 
governorship,  after  the  Restoration. 

In  1649,  after  the  English  Civil  War,  the  home  country 
for  a  time  became  a  republican  "Commonwealth."  Parlia- 
Virginia  ment  sent  Commissioners  to  America  to  secure 
under  the  ^ne  obedience  of  the  colonies.  Berkeley  wished 

Common-  . 

wealth,  to  resist  these  officers,  but  the  Assembly  quietly 
1649-1660  se£  nml  aside  and  made  terms.  With  the  ap 
proval  of  the  Commissioners,  the  government  was  reorgan 
ized  so  as  to  put  more  power  into  the  hands  of  the  Burgesses, 
because  parliament  could  trust  them  better  than  it  could 
the  more  aristocratic  elements.  Each  year  a  House  of 
Burgesses  was  to  be  chosen  as  formerly,  but  this  body  was 
now  to  elect  the  governor  and  Council. 


EARLY  MARYLAND  41 

During   the   next   nine  years    (1652-1660),    Virginia   was 
almost  an  independent  and  democratic  state.     On  one  occasion 
(1657),  a  dispute  arose  between  the  Burgesses  and  An  inde_ 
the    governor.       Governor     Matthews    and    the  pendent 
Council    then    declared    the   Assembly   dissolved  democracy 
(as   a  royal  governor  would  have  done).     The  Burgesses 
held  that  the  governor,  having  been  made  by  them,  could  not 
unmake  them,  and  that  "we  are  not  dissoluable  by  any 
power  yet  extant  in  Virginia  but  our  owne."     Matthews 
threatened  to  refer  the  matter  to  England.     The  Burgesses 
then  deposed  him,  and  proceeded  to  reelect  him  upon  condition 
that  he  acknowledge  their  supreme  authority. 

In  March,  1660,  Governor  Matthews  died.  Charles  II 
had  just  returned  to  the  throne  in  England.  The  Assembly 
wished  to  conciliate  Charles,  and  so  it  chose  Berkeley 
governor  a^ain.  But  it  also  made  an  attempt  to  save 
Commonwealth  liberties  by  enacting  that  Berkeley  "governe 
according  to  the  ancient  laws  of  England  and  the  established 
lawes  of  this  country,  and  .  .  .  that  once  in  two  years  at 
least  he  call  a  Grand  Assembly,  and  that  he  do  not  dissolve 
this  Assembly  without  the  consente  of  the  major  part  of 
the  House."  The  failure  of  this  attempt  to  restrict  the  new 
governor  belongs  to  a  later  chapter. 

IV.   MARYLAND:    A  PROPRIETARY  PROVINCE 

Among  the  people  of  Lord  Baltimore's  colony,  as  among  English-speaking 
people  in  general,  one  might  observe  a  fierce  spirit  of  political  liberty  coupled 
with  an  ingrained  respect  for  law.  —  FISKE,  Old  Virginia. 

For  Maryland,  the  plan  of  colonization  was  much  like 
that    of    Raleigh's    day.     George    Calvert,    a    high-minded 
gentleman,  had  been  interested  for  many  years  George 
in  the  expansion  of  England.     He  was  a  member  Calver*' 
of  the  London  Company  and  of  the  New  Eng-  first  Lord 
land  Council  (p.  47) ;   and  finally  he  took  upon  Baltimore 
his  own  shoulders  a  separate  attempt  to  build  a  colony. 
In  1623  he  secured  a  charter  from  King  James  for  a  vast 
tract  in  Newfoundland,  with  authority  to  rule  settlers  there ; 


42  EARLY  MARYLAND 

and  to  this  Province  of  Avalon,  with  its  "Bay  of  Flowers" 
and  "Harbor  of  Heartsease,"  he  sent  out  several  bodies  of 
colonists.  Just  after  receiving  the  grant,  Calvert  became  a 
Catholic,  though  that  religion  was  then  persecuted  sternly 
in  England.  Until  his  conversion  his  life  had  been  spent 
mainly  in  the  public  service ;  but  as  a  Catholic  he  could  no 
longer  hold  office.  To  reward  his  past  services,  the  King 
made  him  Baron  of  Baltimore,  and  the  new  peer  then  spent 
some  years  in  his  colony  —  only  to  learn  by  bitter  experi 
ence  that  he  had  been  misled  cruelly  as  to  its  climate  and 
wealth. 

Broken  in  health  and  fortune,  Baltimore  at  last  abandoned 
that  harsh  location,  and  petitioned  King  Charles  for  a 
The  charter  more  southerly  province.  Before  the  new  grant 
of  1632  for  was  completed,  he  died  ;  but  in  1632  the  Charter 
for  Maryland  was  issued  to  his  son.  The  charter 
sanctioned  representative  self-government.  It  put  the  head 
of  the  Baltimore  family  in  the  position,  practically,  of 
a  constitutional  king  over  the  settlers,  but  his  great  authority 
was  limited  by  one  supreme  provision,  not  found  in  the 
charter  to  Raleigh :  in  raising  taxes  and  making  laws, 
the  proprietor  could  act  only  with  the  advice  and  consent 
of  an  Assembly  of  the  freemen  (landowners)  or  of  their  rep 
resentatives.  This  recognition  of  political  rights  for  the 
settlers,  in  a  royal  charter,  is  an  onward  step  in  the  his 
tory  of  liberty.  The  creation  of  the  Virginia  Assembly, 
and  the  devotion  of  the  Virginians  to  it,  had  borne  fruit. 
Between  1620  and  1630,  it  became  a  settled  conviction  for 
all  Englishmen,  at  last  even  for  the  court  circle,  that  colo 
nization  in  America  was  possible  only  upon  the  basis  of  a 
large  measure  of  self-government. 

And  the  Maryland  Assembly  soon  won  unexpected  power. 

The  proprietors  did  not  live  in  the  colony.     They  ruled 

it  through  governors,  whom  they  appointed  and 

Growth  of         j.        •        j  -n  i    ,  i  .i  j    i 

power  in  dismissed  at  will,  and  to  whom  they  delegated 
the  AS-  such  authority  as  thev  chose.  The  governor 

sembly  .  J  "  .          , 

was  assisted  by  a  small  Council,  also  appointed 
by    the   proprietor.     This   proprietary   machinery   was   in- 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-GOVERNMENT  43 

tended  to  be  the  controlling  part  of  the  government. 
But  within  twenty  years  Maryland  grew  into  a  demo 
cratic  commonwealth,  with  the  Assembly  for  the  center 
of  authority. 

In  1634  the  proprietor  sent  out  the  first  body  of  settlers, 
two  hundred  strong.  The  governor  was  directed  to  call 
an  Assembly,  but  was  authorized  also  to  adjourn 

j     j-        i  VL  -11  £    -4-      The  struggle 

and  dissolve  it  at  will  and  to  veto  any  of  its  over  the 
acts.  Baltimore  himself  reserved  a  further  veto. 
Moreover,  he  intended  to  keep  for  himself  the 
sole  right  to  initiate  legislation.  He  meant  to  draw  up 
all  laws  in  full,  and  to  submit  them  to  the  Assembly  - 
which  might  then  approve  them  or  reject  them,  but  might 
not  amend  them.  The  charter,  he  pointed  out,  declared 
that  he  was  to  make  laws  "with  the  advice  and  consent" 
of  the  freemen.  This  phrase  was  the  same  that  English 
kings  had  used  for  centuries  to  express  the  division  of  power 
between  themselves  and  parliament,  and  meantime  parlia 
ment  had  grown  in  influence  until  it  had  gained  much 
initiative  and  was  well  on  the  way  to  become  the  real  law- 
making  power.  Accordingly,  the  people  of  Maryland  in 
sisted  upon  taking  the  words  in  the  sense  which  history  had 
given  them  —  and  even  with  some  prophetic  sense  —  rather 
than  in  their  literal  meaning. 

The  first  Assembly  (1635)  passed  a  code  of  laws.  Balti 
more  vetoed  them  all,  on  the  ground  that  the  Assembly  had 
exceeded  its  authority.  To  the  next  Assembly  (1638) 
Baltimore  sent  a  carefully  drawn  body  of  laws.  After  full 
debate,  these  were  rejected  by  unanimous  vote  of  all  the 
representatives.  Then  the  Assembly  passed  a  number  of 
bills,  several  of  them  based  upon  those  that  had  been 
presented  by  Baltimore ;  but  all  these  fell  before  the  pro 
prietor's  veto.  In  the  following  year,  however,  Baltimore 
wisely  gave  wav,  and  soon  ceased  all  attempts  to  introduce 
bills. 

Another  contest  concerned  the  make-up  of  the  As 
sembly.  The  first  Assemblies  were  "primary"  gatherings, 
to  which  all  freemen  might  come ;  but  to  the  spring  As- 


44  EARLY  MARYLAND 

sembly  of  1639  each  "hundred"  (the  local  unit  in  early 
Maryland)  chose  two  delegates.  Notwithstanding  this,  from 
The  one  of  the  hundreds  there  appeared  two  other 

Assembly  men  claiming  a  right  to  sit  as  members  be- 
"represen-  cause  they  "had  not  consented"  to  the  election! 
tative "  Stranger  still,  the  absurd  claim  was  allowed ! 
But  the  same  Assembly  decreed  that  in  future  there  should 
sit  only  (1)  delegates  duly  chosen  and  (2)  gentlemen  sum 
moned  by  the  governor's  personal  writs.  In  1641  a  defeated 
candidate  claimed  a  right  to  sit  "in  his  own  person,"  but  this 
time  the  plea  was  promptly  denied.  The  Assembly  had 
become  representative. 

The  next  step  was  for  the  Assembly  to  divide  into  two 
Houses.  At  first  the  Council  sat  as  part  of  the  Assembly 
The  division  m  one  body  with  the  freemen  or  their  delegates, 
into  two  Moreover,  the  governor  summoned  other  gentle 
men,  as  many  as  he  pleased,  by  personal  writs, 
independent  of  election.  These  appointed  members  sym 
pathized  naturally  with  the  proprietor  and  the  governor, 
while  the  delegates  sometimes  stood  for  the  interests  of 
the  settlers.  As  early  as  1642  the  differences  between  the 
two  elements,  appointed  and  elected,  led  the  representa 
tives  to  propose  a  division  into  two  "Houses."  The  at 
tempt  failed  because  of  the  governor's  veto ;  and  the 
arrangement  did  not  become  law  until  1650,  six  years  after 
success  had  been  achieved  in  Massachusetts  (pp.  87—88). 

The  Assembly  of  1642  attempted  also  to  secure  stated 
meetings,  independent  of  a  governor's  call,  and  to  do  away 
The  with  the  governor's  right  to  dissolve  them.  In 

^embiy's  form?  these  radical  attempts  failed  ;  but  in  reality 
over  its  the  Assembly  soon  learned  to  control  its  own  sit- 
sittings  tings,  except  in  extreme  crises,  through  its  power 
over  taxation.  It  granted  supplies  only  for  a  year  at  a 
time  (so  that  it  had  to  be  called  each  year),  and  it 
deferred  this  vote  of  supplies  until  it  was  ready  to  ad 
journ.  Not  until  a  generation  later  was  this  step  adopted 
by  the  English  parliament  in  its  struggle  with  the 
crown. 


RELIGIOUS  MATTERS 


45 


Maryland  was  also  a  religious  experiment.     After  George 
Calvert's  conversion  to  Catholicism,  he  had  a  new  motive 
for  wishing  to  form  a  colony.     He  and  his  son  Mar  land 
wished  to  establish  a  refuge  for  their  persecuted  and  the 
co-religionists.     The  charter,  therefore,  omits  the  Catholics 
usual   reference   to    the   oath  of  supremacy  —  which  good 
Catholics   could    not    take  —  and   probably   there   was   an 


~ 


An<. 


-;    /f&^£ffv<ifMwij  s*j  j-^  ^^^'A&w-t/f.avAvi  J~j 

^a.v*  %^  ^  ^^-^u^  ^y  ^  A.^  <*fy*A-&  1 

fsr**.  '&&  &fUU*-  tMH^&t-  *&  f&A*4S****X  **£%*'i 


FACSIMILE  OF  INSTRUCTIONS  FROM  LORD  BALTIMORE  TO  His  BROTHER,  LEO  CAL- 
VERT,  regarding  the  treatment  of  Protestants  in  Maryland. 

understanding  between  king  and  proprietor  that  Catholics 
would  not  be  molested.  But  Maryland  was  never  a  Cath 
olic  colony  in  the  sense  that  the  Catholics  could  have 
made  their  religion  the  state  religion,  or  that  they  could 
have  excluded  other  sects.  The  most  that  the  devout, 
high-minded  Baltimore  could  do  for  his  fellow  worshipers, 
-  possibly  all  that  he  wished  to  do,  —  was  to  secure  tolera 
tion  for  them  by  compelling  them  to  tolerate  others.  From 


46  EARLY  MARYLAND 

the  first  there  were  many  Protestants  in  the  colony,  possibly 
a  majority.  Baltimore's  instructions  to  the  governor  of  the 
first  expedition  enjoined  him  to  permit  "no  scandal  or 
offense"  to  be  given  to  any  of  the  Protestants. 

When  the  Puritan    Commonwealth    was    established    in 

England,  the  Puritans  in  Maryland  tried  to  win  control  in 

that  province.     Lord  Baltimore  then  persuaded 

"  Toleration   the  Assembly  to  enact  the  Toleration  Act  of  1649. 

Act  "  of         This  great  law,  it  is  true,  threatened  death  to  all 

non-Christians  (including  Jews  and  any  Unitarians 

of  that  day)  ;  but  it  provided  that  "no  person  .   .   .  profess 

ing  to  believe  in  Jesus  Christ,  shall  be  in  any  wise  molested 

or  discountenanced  for  his  or  her  religion." 

At  a  later  time  the  Catholics  were  persecuted  cruelly  in 
this  colony  that  they  had  founded.  After  the  English 
Persecuting  Revolution  of  1688,  the  Catholic  Baltimore  family 
statutes  was  deprived  of  all  political  power  ;  and,  for  a  gen- 

against  .       ^  ,  1  •  T 

Catholics       eration,  Maryland  became  a  royal  province.     In 


after  less  ^715  ^e  Lord  Baltimore  of  the  day,  having  de 
clared  himself  a  convert  to  Protestantism,  recovered  his 
authority.  Meantime  the  Episcopal  Church  had  been  estab 
lished  in  Maryland  and  ferocious  statutes,  like  those  then 
in  force  in  England,  had  been  enacted  against  Catholics,  to 
blacken  the  law  books  through  the  rest  of  the  colonial 
period. 


CHAPTER   III 

NEW  ENGLAND  AND  THE  PILGRIMS 

After  all  that  can  be  said  for  material  and  intellectual  advantages,  it  re 
mains  true  that  moral  causes  determine  the  greatness  of  nations.;  and  no 
nation  ever  started  on  its  career  with  a  larger  proportion  of  strong  characters 
or  a  higher  level  of  moral  earnestness  than  the  English  colonies  in  America. 
—  LECKY,  England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  II,  2. 

Next  to  the  fugitives  whom  Moses  led  out  of  Egypt,  the  little  shipload  of 
outcasts  who  landed  at  Plymouth  .  .  .  are  destined  to  influence  the  future  of 
mankind.  —  JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 

//  Columbus  discovered  a  new  continent,  the  Pilgrims  discovered  the  New 
World.  —  GOLD  WIN  SMITH. 

IN  1620,  roused  by  the  success  of  the  London  Company 
at  Jamestown,  some  members  of  the  Plymouth  branch  of 
the  old  Virginia  Company  reorganized  as  "The  The  Council 
Council  resident  in  Plymouth  .   .   .  for  the  plant-  for  New 
ing  of  New  England,"  and  a  royal  charter  gave  England 
this  body  powers  similar  to  those  of  the  London  Company, 
with  a  grant  of  all  North  America  between  the  40th  parallel 
and  the  48th. 

This  "New  England  Council,"  or  "Plymouth  Council," 
sent  out  no  colonists.     Instead,  it  sold  or  granted  tracts  of 
land,  with  various  privileges,  to  adventurers  who 
undertook  to  found  settlements.     One  such  charter 


it  sold  to  agents  representing  the  struggling  Pil-  attempts  at 

,  i  •   i      T  •  i        L    i  IT    colonization 

grim  colony,  which,  by  accident,  had  been  rounded 
within  the  New  England  Council's  territory  (p.  53).  Some 
small  trading  stations,  also,  were  established  under  such 
grants  ;  and  in  1623  there  came  a  more  ambitious  attempt. 
Robert  Gorges,  son  of  the  most  active  member  of  the 
Plymouth  Council,  was  granted  lands  near  Boston  harbor, 
with  a  charter  empowering  him  to  rule  settlers  "accord- 

47 


48 


BEGINNINGS  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 


ing  to  such  lawes  as  shall  be  hereafter  established  by 
public  authoritie  of  the  state  assembled  in  Parliament 
in  New  England"  The  Council  also  commissioned  him 
'''General  Governor"  of  all  settlements  to  be  formed  in 
their  vast  territory,  —  which  caused  the  feeble  Pilgrim 
colony  to  dread  his  coming.  He  brought  to  Massachusetts 
Bay  an  excellent  company,  containing  several  "gentlemen," 
two  clergymen,  and  selected  farmers  and  mechanics ;  but 


after  one  winter  the  colony  broke  up.  The  gentle  Bradford, 
governor  and  historian  of  Plymouth,  wrote  with  unusually 
grim  humor  that  Gorges  departed,  "haveing  scarce  saluted 
the  Cuntrie  of  his  Government,  not  finding  the  state  of 
things  hear  to  answer  his  qualitie." 

The  forces  at  work  so  far  in  settling  New  England,  except 
for  the  Pilgrims  at  Plymouth,  were  mainly  commercial. 
But  success  was  to  come  from  a  new  force  just  ready  to  take 
up  the  work  of  colonization. 


AND  ENGLISH  PURITANISM  49 

This  force  was  Puritanism.  The  "established"  church  in 
England  was  the  Episcopalian.  Within  that  church  the  dom 
inant  party  had  strong  "High-church"  leanings 

j       .,  11,1  i  «i  .    Puritanism 

and  was  ardently  supported  by  the  royal  head  ot 
the  church,"  -Elizabeth,  James,  Charles,  in  turn  ;  but  it  was 
engaged  in  constant  struggle  with  a  large,  aggressive  Puritan 
element.  Puritanism  was  much  more  than  a  religious  sect.  It 
was  an  ardent  aspiration  for  reform  in  many  lines.  In  poli 
tics,  it  stood  for  an  advance  in  popular  rights ;  in  conduct, 
for  stricter  and  higher  morality ;  in  theology,  for  the  stern 
doctrines  of  Calvinism,  which  appealed  powerfully  to  the 
strongest  souls  of  that  age ;  in  church  matters,  for  an  exten 
sion  of  the  "reformation"  that  had  cut  off  the  English 
Church  from  Rome. 

Two  groups  of  English  Puritans  stood  in  sharp  opposi 
tion  to  each  other,  —  the  influential  "Low-church"  element 
within    the   church,   and   the   despised   Separatists  «,  Low_ 
outside  of  it.     The  Low-churchmen  had  no  wish  church " 
to  separate  church  and  state.     They  wished  one  I 
national  church,  —  a  Low-church  church,  —  to  which  every 
body  within  England  should  conform.     They  desired  also 
to  make  the  church  a  more  far-reaching  moral  power.     To 
that  end  they  aimed  to  introduce  more  preaching  into  the 
service  and  to  simplify  ceremonies,  —  to  do  away  with  the 
surplice,  with  the  ring  in  the  marriage  service,  with  the  sign 
of  the  cross  in  baptism,  and  perhaps  with  the  prayer-book. 
Most  of  them  did  not  care  to  change  radically  the  govern 
ment  of  the  English  Church,  but  some  among  them  spoke 
with  scant  respect  of  bishops. 

The  Independents,  or  "Puritans  of  the  Separation,"  be 
lieved  that  there  should  be  no  national  church,  but  that  reli 
gious  societies  should  be  wholly  separate  from  the  And  the 
state.     They  wished  each  local  religious  organiza-  Separatists 
tion  a  little  democratic  society  independent  in  government 
even  of  other  churches.     To  all  other  sects  the  The  Pil_ 
Separatists  seemed  the  most  dangerous  of  radi-  grims  in 
cals,  —  mere    anarchists   in   religion.     They   had  3 
been  persecuted  savagely  by  Queen  Elizabeth,  and  some  of 


50  NEW  ENGLAND 

their  societies  had  fled  to  Holland.  In  1608,  early  in  the 
reign  of  James,  one  of  their  few  remaining  churches  —  a 
little  congregation  from  the  village  of  Scrooby  —  managed  to 
escape  to  that  same  land,  "wher  they  heard  was  freedome 
of  Religion  for  all  men"  :  - 

"...  a  countrie  wher  they  must  learn  a  new  language  and  get 
their  livings  they  knew  not  how  .  .  .  not  acquainted  with  trads 
or  traffique,  by  which  that  countrie  doth  subsist,  but  .  .  .  used  to 
a  plaine  countrie  life  and  the  inocente  trade  of  husbandrey."  1 

They  first  settled  in  Amsterdam,  but  had  no  sooner  begun 
to  feel  safe  in  some  measure,  through  toil  and  industry, 
from  "the  grime  and  grisly  face  of  povertie  coming  upon 
them  like  an  armed  man,"  than  it  seemed  needful  to  move 
again,  this  time  to  Ley  den ;  and 

"being  now  hear  pitchet,  they  fell  to  such  trads  and  imployments 
as  they  best  could,  valewing  peace  and  their  spirituall  comforte 
above  all  other  riches  .  .  .  injoyinge  much  sweete  and  delighte- 
full  societie  ...  in  the  wayes  of  God"  .  .  .  but  subject  to  such 
"greate  labor  and  hard  fare"  that  "many  that  desired  to  be  with 
them  .  .  .  and  to  enjoy e  the  Hbertie  of  the  gospell  .  .  .  chose  the 
prisons  in  England  rather  than  this  libertie  in  Holland." 

After  some  ten  years  in  Holland,  the  Pilgrims  decided 
to  remove  once  more,  to  the  wilds  of  North  America.  Brad- 
Reasons  for  ^orc^  giyes  three  motives  for  this  :  an  easier  liveli- 
removai  to  hood,  especially  for  their  children ;  the  removal 
of  their  children  from  what  they  considered  the 
loose  morals  of  easy-going  Dutch  society  ;  and  the  preserva 
tion  of  their  religious  principles  :  - 

"Old  age  beganne  to  steale  on  many  of  them  (and  their  greate 
and  continuall  labours  .  .  .  hastened  it  before  the  time).  And 
many  of  their  children  that  were  of  the  best  dispositions  and 
gracious  inclinations,  haveing  learnde  to  bear  the  yoake  in  their 
youth,  and  willing  to  bear  parte  of  their  parents  burdens,  were 
often  times  so  oppressed  with  heavie  labours  that  .  .  .  their 

1  William  Bradford,  in  his  History  of  Plymouth  Plantation.  The  quoted  passages 
in  the  following  paragraphs  upon  Plymouth  are  from  this  source  when  no  other 
authority  is  mentioned. 


THE  PILGRIMS  51 

bodies  .  .  .  became  decreped  in  their  early  youth,  the  vigour  of 
nature  being  consumed  in  the  very  budd,  as  it  were. 

"But  that  which  was  ...  of  all  sorrows  most  heavie  to  be 
borne,  —  many  of  their  children,  by  these  occasions  and  the  greate 
licentiousnes  in  that  countrie,  and  the  manifold  temptations  of  the 
place,  were  drawn  away  .  .  .  into  extravagante  and  dangerous 
courses,  tending  to  dissolutenes  and  the  danger  of  their  souls." 

Winslow  (another  Pilgrim  historian)  puts  emphasis  on  a 
fourth  reason,  —  a  patriotic  desire  to  establish  themselves 
under  the  English  flag,  —  one  of  their  chief  griefs  in  Holland 
being  that  their  children  intermarried  with  the  Dutch  and 
were  drawn  away  from  their  English  tongue  and  manners. 

Of  these  four  motives,  the  religious  one  was  beyond  doubt 
the  weightiest.     In  Holland,  there  was  no  growth  for  their 
Society.     It  would  die  out,  as  the  older  members  The  re_ 
passed  off  the  scene ;   and  with  it  would  die  their  ligious 
principles.     But,   if  they  established  themselves  E 
in  a  New  World,  "a  greate  hope  and  inward  zeall  they  had 
of  laying  some  good  foundation  for   the  propagating  and 
advancing  the  gospell  of  the  kingdome  of  Christ  in  those 
remote  parts  of  the  world;  yea,  though  they  should  be  but 
even  as  stepping-stones  unto  others  for  the  performing  of  so 
greate  a  work." 

From  the  London  Company  the  Pilgrims  secured  a  grant 
of  land  and  a  charter ;  and,  by  entering  into  partnership 
with  another  group  of  London  merchants,  they  The    ant 
secured  the  necessary  money.     For  many  months,  from  the 
says  Bradford,  this  opening  business   was   "de-  London 
layed  by  many  rubbs ;  for  the  Virginia  Counsell 
was  so  disturbed  with  factions  as  no  bussines  could  goe  for 
ward."     But  when   Sandys    and    the  Puritan  faction  got 
control  in  that  Company,  the  matter  was  quickly  arranged, 
-  the  more  quickly,  perhaps,  because  Brewster,  one  of  the 
Pilgrim  leaders,  had  been  a  trusted  steward   of   a   manor 
belonging  to  the  Sandys  family. 

The  seventy  "merchant  adventurers"  who  furnished 
funds,  subscribed  stock  in  £10  shares.  Captain  John 


52  THE  PILGRIMS  AT  PLYMOUTH 

Smith  says  that  by  1623  they  had  advanced  more  than 
$200,000  in  modern  values.  Each  emigrant  was  counted 
Partnership  as  holding  One  share  for  "adventuring"  himself, 
with  London  That  is,  the  emigrant  and  the  capital  that  brought 
him  to  America  went  into  equal  partnership. 
Each  emigrant  who  furnished  money  or  supplies  was  given 
more  shares  upon  the  same  terms  as  the  merchants.  For 
seven  years  all  wealth  produced  was  to  go  into  a  common 
stock,  but  from  that  stock  the  colonists  were  to  have  "meate, 
drink,  apparell,  and  all  provissions."  The  partnership  was 
then  to  be  dissolved,  each  colonist  and  each  merchant  taking 
from  the  common  property  according  to  his  shares  of  stock. 

The  arrangement  was  clumsy,  because  it  involved  a  system 
of  labor  in  common ;  but  it  was  generous  toward  the  settlers. 
Penniless  immigrants  to  Virginia  became  "servants,"  as 
separate,  helpless  individuals,  to  work  for  seven  years  under 
overseers  and  at  the  end  of  the  time  to  receive  merely  their 
freedom  and  some  wild  land.  The  penniless  Pilgrims  were 
"servants"  for  a  time,  in  a  sense;  but  only  as  one  large 
body,  and  to  a  company  of  which  they  themselves  were 
part :  and  their  persons  were  controlled,  and  their  labors 
directed,  by  officers  chosen  by  themselves  from  their  own 
number.  The  settlers,  it  is  true,  felt  aggrieved  that  the 
merchants  did  not  grant  them  also  for  themselves  one  third 
of  their  time,  together  with  the  houses  they  might  build  and 
the  land  they  might  improve.  But  it  is  clear  now  that  under 
such  an  arrangement  the  merchants  would  have  lost  their 
whole  venture.  As  it  was,  they  made  no  profit. 

Two  heart-breaking  years  dragged  along  in  these  nego 
tiations  with  the  Virginia  Company  and  the  London 
The  May-  merchants ;  and  the  season  of  1620  was  far 
flower  wasted  when  (September  16)  the  Mayflower  at 

last  set  sail.  Most  of  the  congregation  stayed  at  Leyden 
to  await  the  outcome  of  this  first  expedition,  and  only  102 
of  the  more  robust  embarked  for  the  venture. 

They  meant  to  settle  "in  the  northern  part  of  Virginia," 

-  somewhere  south  of  the  Hudson.     But  the  little  vessel 

was  tossed  by  the  autumn  storms  until  the  captain  lost  his 


THE  MAYFLOWER  COMPACT  53 

reckoning;  and  they  made  land,  after  ten  weeks,  on  the 
bleak  shore  of  New  England,  already  in  the  clutch  of  winter 
(November  21).  The  tempestuous  season,  and  Settlement 
the  dangerous  shoals  off  Cape  Cod,  made  it  un-  at  Plymouth 
wise  to  continue  the  voyage.  For  some  weeks  they  explored 
the  coast  in  small  boats,  and  finally  decided  to  make  their 
home  at  Plymouth;  but  it  was  not  till  the  fourth  day  of 
January  (New  Style)  that  they  "beganne  to  erecte  the  first 


THE  MAYFLOWER  C'OMPACT.     From  the  original  manuscript  of  Bradford's 
Plimouth  Plantation. 

house,  for  commone  use,  to  receive  them  and  their  goods." 
Meantime,    they   had    adopted    /A<?    Mayflower    Compact. 
The  charter  from  the  Virginia  Company  had  provided  that 
they  should  be  governed  by  officers  of  their  own  The 
choosing.      That    grant,    however,    had  no  force  Mayflower 
outside  Virginia;  and    "some   of   the  strangers1  ( 
among  them  let  fall  mutinous  speeches,"  threatening  "to 

1  Part  of  the  expedition  had  joined  it  in  England,  without  previous  connection 
with  the  Leyden  congregation.     They  had  also  a  few  "servants." 


54  THE  PILGRIMS  AT  PLYMOUTH 

use  their  own  libertie."  To  prevent  such  anarchy,  the 
Pilgrims,  before  landing,  drew  up  and  signed  a  "Compact," 
believing  "that  shuch  an  acte  by  them  done  .  .  .  might  be 
as  firme  as  any  patent." 

This  famous  agreement  has  sometimes  been  called,  care 
lessly,  a  written  constitution  of  an  independent  state. 
This  it  is  not.  It  does  not  hint  at  independence,  but  ex 
presses  lavish  allegiance  to  the  English  crown.  And  it  is 
not  a  constitution  though  it  does  resemble  a  preamble  to 
one  :  it  does  not  determine  what  officers  there  should  be,  or 
how  or  when  they  should  be  chosen,  or  what  powers  they 
should  have.  The  signers  declare  their  intention  (in  the 
absence  of  established  authority)  to  maintain  order  by  up 
holding  the  will  of  the  majority  of  their  own  company. 
A  prelude  And  herein  lies  the  peculiar  distinction  of  this 
to  many  document.  It  is  the  first  of  a  long  series  of  similar 

such  agree-  ....  .  ,  , 

ments  in  agreements  in  America,  in  regions  where  settle- 
America  ment  has  for  a  time  outrun  government,  —  first, 
on  the  coast  of  Maine  and  New  Hampshire,  then  in  the 
woods  of  Kentucky  and  Tennessee,  then  on  the  prairies  of 
Illinois  and  Iowa,  and  very  recently  in  Western  mining 
camps.  Rare  among  other  peoples,  this  characteristic  and 
saving  American  genius  for  finding  a  basis  for  law  and  order 
in  the  supremacy  of  the  common  will  dates  from  these  early, 
humble  English  settlers  at  Plymouth. 

The  way  in  which  the  new  government  was  put  in  action 
is  told  by  Bradford  in  few  words :  - 

"Then  [as  soon  as  the  compact  had  been  signed,  while  still  in 
the  Mayflower  cabin]  they  choose,  or  rather  confirmed,  Mr.  John 
Carver  their  Gouvernor  for  that  year.  [Carver  had  probably  been 
made  governor  before,  under  authority  of  the  charter ;  such  action 
would  now  need  to  be  "confirmed."]  And  after  they  had  pro 
vided  a  place  for  their  goods  .  .  .  and  begunne  some  small  cot 
tages,  as  time  would  admitte,  they  mette  and  consulted  of  lawes 
and  orders." 

Expectations  of  quick-won  wealth  in  America  still  dazzled 
men's  minds.  In  1624  Captain  John  Smith  wrote:  "I 


DISAPPOINTMENTS  AND  HARDSHIPS  55 

promise  no  Mines  of  gold;  yet,  .  .  .  New  England  hath 
yeelded  already,  by  generall  computation,  £100,000  at  least 
in  the  fisheries.  Therefore,  honourable  country-  Expectations 
men  let  not  the  meanness  of  the  word  fish  dis-  of  wealth 
taste  you,  for  it  will  afford  as  good  gold  as  the  Mines  of 
Guiana,  or  Potassie,  with  less  hazard  and  charge,  and  more 
certainty."  Individual  traders,  too,  had  sometimes  made 
sudden  fortunes  in  the  fur  trade.  Accordingly,  the  Pilgrims 
expected  to  give  most  of  their  energies  to  these  sources  of 
magic  riches.  Pastor  Robinson  wrote,  as  late  as  June  14, 
1620:  "Let  this  spetially  be  borne  in  minde,  that  the 
greatest  parte  of  the  collonie  is  like  to  be  imployed  con 
stantly,  not  upon  dressing  ther  perticuler  lands,  and  building 
houses,  but  upon  fishing,  trading,  etc." 

Such  delusions  faded  quickly  before  stern  facts.  Disappoint. 
The  first  months,  in  particular,  were  a  time  of  cruel  merits  and 
hardship.     Says  Bradford,  - 

"Now,  summer  being  done,  all  things  stand  upon  them  with  a 
wetherbeaten  face;  and  the  whole  countrie,  full  of  woods  and 
thickets,  represented  a  wild  and  savage  hiew.  ...  In  2  or  3 
months  time,  halfe  their  company  dyed  .  .  .  wanting  houses  and 
other  comforts ;  [and  of  the  rest]  in  the  time  of  most  distres,  ther 
was  but  6  or  7  sound  persons"  to  care  for  all  the  sick  and  dying. 

Of  the  eighteen  married  women  who  landed  in  January, 
May  found  living  only  four.  The  settlement  escaped  the 
tomahawk  that  first  terrible  winter  only  because  a  plague 
(probably  the  smallpox,  caught  from  some  trading  vessel) 
had  destroyed  the  Indians  in  the  neighborhood.  But  when 
Spring  came  and  the  Mayflower  sailed  for  England,  not  one 
person  of  the  steadfast  colony  went  with  her.  In  Holland 
they  had  carefully  pondered  the  dangers  that  might  assail 
them,  and  had  highly  concluded  "that  all  grate  and  honor 
able  actions  must  be  enterprised  and  overcome  with  answer 
able  courages." 

For  many  years  more  the  settlement  had  a  stern  struggle 
for  bare  life.  For  the  fur  trade,  of  course,  the  inexperienced 
Pilgrims  were  wholly  unfit ;  and,  in  any  case,  to  set  up  a 


56  THE  PLYMOUTH  PILGRIMS 

permanent  colony,  with  women  and  children,  called  press- 
ingly  for  attention  to  raising  food  and  building  homes. 
The  "supplies"  expected  from  the  London  partners  came, 
from  year  to  year,  in  too  meager  measure  to  care  even  for 
the  new  immigrants  who  appeared  along  with  them ;  and 
the  crops  of  European  grains  failed  season  after  season. 
Fortunately,  during  the  first  winter,  the  colonists  found  a 
supply  of  Indian  corn,  for  seed,  and  a  friendly  native  to 
teach  them  how  to  cultivate  it ;  and  the  old  cornfields  of  the 
abandoned  Indian  villages  saved  them  the  formidable  labor 


PILGRIMS  GOING  TO  "  MEETING."     From  the  painting  by  Boughton. 

of  clearing  away  the  forest.  The  slow  progress,  even  then, 
toward  a  secure  supply  of  food  is  shown  vividly  in  a  letter 
from  Edward  Winslow  at  the  end  of  the  first  year :  - 

"We  have  built  seven  dwelling  houses,  and  four  for  the  use  of 
the  plantation  [for  common  use,  that  is,  as  storehouses,  etc.], 
and  have  made  preparation  for  divers  others.  We  set,  the  last 
spring,  some  twenty  acres  of  Indian  corn,  and  sowed  some  six 
acres  of  barley  and  pease.  .  .  .  God  be  praised,  we  had  good 
increase  of  [the]  Indian  corn,  and  of  our  barley,  indifferent  good, 
but  our  pease  not  worth  the  gathering."  [Winslow  explains  this 
failure  of  the  European  seed  by  the  colonists'  ignorance  of  the 
seasons  in  America.] 


DISAPPOINTMENTS  AND  HARDSHIPS  57 

In  the  first  year,  then,  the  settlers  had  built  only  eleven  rude 
cabins  and  had  brought  only  twenty-six  acres  of  land  into 
cultivation.  Winslow  was  writing  to  a  friend  in  England 
who  expected  soon  to  join  the  colony.  The  following  advice 
in  the  same  letter  suggests  forcefully  some  features  of  life  in 
the  new  settlement :  - 

''Bring  every  man  a  musket.  .  .  .  Let  it  be  long  in  the  barrel, 
and  fear  not  the  weight  of  it;  for  most  of  our  shooting  is  from 
stands  [rests].  If  you  bring  anything  for  comfort  [that  is,  any 
thing  more  than  bare  necessaries],  butter  or  sallet  oil  ...  [is] 
very  good.  .  .  .  Bring  paper  and  linseed  oile  for  your  windows, 
and  cotton  yarn  for  your  lamps  [for  wicks]." 

For  long  the  governor's   most   important  duty   was   to 
direct  the  work  in  the  fields  —  where  he  toiled,  too,  with  his 
own  hands,  along  with  all  the  men  and  the  larger 
boys.     But  even  among  these  "sober  and  godlv  Failure  of 

,,    .  £  .    j  .  j    industry  in 

men      the  system  ot  industry  in  common  proved  common 
a  hindrance :  - 

"For  this  communitie  was  found  to  breed  much  confusion  and 
discontente,  and  retard  much  imployment  that  would  have  been 
to  their  benefite  and  comforte.  For  the  yung-men,  that  were  most 
able  and  fitte,  .  .  .  did  repine  that  they  should  spend  their  time 
and  strength  to  worke  for  other  mens  wives  and  children.  .  .  . 
The  aged  and  graver  men,  to  be  ranked  and  equalised  in  labours 
and  victuals,  cloaths,  etc.,  with  the  younger  and  meaner  sorte, 
thought  it  some  indignitie  and  disrespect  unto  them.  And  for 
mens  wives  to  be  commanded  to  doe  service  for  other  men,  as 
dressing  their  meate,  washing  their  cloaths,  etc.,  they  deemed  it  a 
kind  of  slaverie ;  neither  could  many  husbands  well  brooke  it." 

In  the  third  year,  famine  seemed  imminent.  Then  Governor 
Bradford,  with  the  approval  of  the  chief  men  of  the  colony, 
set  aside  the  agreement  with  the  London  partners  in  this 
matter  of  common  industry,  and  assigned  to  each  family  a 
parcel  of  land  "for  the  time  only."  Such  trade  and  fish 
ery  as  were  carried  on  remained  under  common  manage 
ment  ;  and  even  these  parcels  of  land  did  not  then  become 


58  THE  PLYMOUTH  PILGRIMS 

private  property.  Only  their  temporary  use  was  given. 
But,  says  Bradford,  "This  had  very  good  success," 

"for  it  made  all  hands  very  industrious,  so  as  much  more  corne  was 
planted  then  other  waise  would  have  been,  by  any  means  the 
Governour  or  any  other  could  use.  .  .  .  The  women  now  wente 
willingly  into  the  field,  and  tooke  their  litle-ons  with  them  to  set 
corne,  which  before  would  aledge  weakness  .  .  .  whom  to  have 
compelled  would  have  bene  thought  great  tiranie." 

For  other  reasons,  too,  the  danger  of  failure  passed  away. 
The  Pilgrims  were  learning  to  use  the  opportunities  about 
Success,  them.  In  1627,  when  the  partnership  was  to  have 
ment  with"  expirec^  little  had  been  done,  it  is  true,  toward 
the^Engiish  repaying  the  London  merchants.  But  the  begin- 
partners  nmg  of  a  promising  fur  trade  had  been  secured ; 
and  Bradford,  with  seven  other  leading  men,  offered  to  as 
sume  the  English  debt  if  they  might  have  control  of  this 
trade  to  raise  the  money.  This  arrangement  was  accepted 
by  all  parties.  It  took  Bradford  fourteen  years  more  to 
pay  the  merchants.  But  meantime  the  merchants  at  once 
surrendered  their  claim  upon  the  colony ;  and  the  lands, 
houses,  and  cattle  were  promptly  divided  among  the  set 
tlers  for  private  property. 

The  political  development  of  Plymouth  may  be  summed 
up  briefly.  Governor  Carver  died  during  the  first  spring. 
Political  de-  The  next  governor,  William  Bradford,  was  re- 
veiopment  elected  year  after  year  until  his  death,  in  1657,  ex 
cept  for  five  years  when  he  absolutely  refused  to  serve.  The 
Assembly  was  the  essential  part  of  the  government.  For  many 
years  it  was,  in  form,  merely  a  town  meeting, —  a  mass  meet 
ing  of  the  voters  of  one  small  village.  Soon  after  1630,  other 
settlements  grew  up  in  the  colony,  but  even  then  the  As 
sembly  continued  for  a  time  to  be  a  meeting  of  all  male  citi 
zens,  held  in  the  oldest  town.  However,  this  clumsy  and 
unfair  system  could  not  last  among  Englishmen.  In  1636 
the  three  chief  towns  sent  representatives  to  sit  with  the 
governor  and  Assistants  to  revise  and  codify  the  laws.  The 
same  device  was  used  the  next  year  in  assessing  taxes  among 


DEMOCRACY  IN  RELIGION  AND  POLITICS  59 

the  towns.  And  in  1639  it  was  decided  that  thereafter  the 
Assembly  should  be  made  up  of  such  representatives,  with 
the  governor  and  Assistants.  There  was  never  a  division 
into  two  "Houses." 

As  other  villages  grew  up  about  the  original  settlement  at 
Plymouth  town,  their  constables  and  other  necessary  officers 
were  at  first  appointed  by  the  central  Assembly.  But, 
soon  after  the  central  government  became  representative, 
the  various  settlements  became  "  towns"  in  a  political  sense, 
with  town  meetings  and  their  own  elected  officers,  after  a 
method  introduced  just  before  in  Massachusetts  Bay  (p.  88). 

The  first  voters  were  the  forty-one  signers  of  the  May 
flower  Compact.  Twenty -five  adult  males  did  not  sign. 
Some  of  these  were  regarded  as  represented  by  The 
fathers  who  did  sign,  and  eleven  were  servants  or  franchise 
temporary  employees ;  but  the  absence  of  other  names  can 
be  explained  only  on  the  ground  that  certain  men  did  not 
wish  to  sign  or  that  they  were  not  asked  to  do  so.  Those 
who  did  sign  made  up  the  original  Assembly.  Thereafter, 
the  Assembly  admitted  to  citizenship  as  it  saw  fit.  For  a 
time  it  gave  the  franchise  to  nearly  all  men  who  came  to  the 
colony.  But  in  1660  a  law  required  that  new  voters  must 
have  a  specified  amount  of  property ;  and  after  1671  the 
franchise  was  restricted  further  to  those  who  could  present 
"satisfactory"  proof  that  they  were  "sober  and  peaceable " 
in  conduct  and  "orthodox  in  the  fundamentals  of  religion" 
In  practice,  this  limited  the  franchise  to  church  members. 

Political  democracy  at  Plymouth  was  an  outgrowth  of  eco 
nomic  and  social  democracy.     There  were  no  materials  for 
anything   else   but   democracy.     Robinson,    in    a  The  causes 
farewell  letter   (Pastor  Robinson   remained  with  of  political 
the  main  congregation  at  Leyden),  regards  it  a 
misfortune  that  the  Pilgrims    "are  not  furnished  with  any 
persons  of  spetiall  eminencie  above  the  rest,  to  be  chosen  into 
offices  of  governmente."     Had  such  persons  been  present, 
public  feeling  would  probably  have  made  them  an  aristocracy 
of  office.     In  that  day,  democracy  rarely  went  further  than 
to  suggest  that  common  men  ought  to  have  a  voice  in  select- 


60 


THE   PLYMOUTH   PILGRIMS 


ing  their  rulers :  the  actual  rulers  were  to  be  selected  from 
the  upper  classes.  But  in  Plymouth  no  one  was  rich,  even 
by  colonial  standards ;  and,  more  than  in  any  other  impor 
tant  colony,  all  the  settlers  came  from  the  "plain  people." 
Hardly  any  of  them  except  Winslow  and  Standish  would 
have  ranked  as  "gentle 
men"  in  England. 
Bradford,  there,  would 
have  remained  a  poor 
yeoman,  and  John  Alden 
a  cooper. 

But,  in  even  greater 
degree,  democracy  in 
politics  at  Plymouth  re 
sulted  from  democracy 
in  the  church,  —  and 
this  ecclesiastical  de 
mocracy  was  the  essence 
of  the  Pilgrim  experi 
ment.  Plymouth  was, 
first,  a  religious  society; 
then,  an  economic  enter 
prise;  and,  last,  and 

incidentally,     a     political     GOVERNOR  EDWARD  WINSLOW,  at  the  age  of 

commonwealth. 

Plymouth    never    se 
cured    a   royal   charter, 
and    its   gov- 


Charters 
and  land          eminent       re- 
titles 


57.  From  a  portrait  (now  in  Pilgrim  Hall, 
Plymouth)  painted  in  England  in  1653  while 
Winslow  was  detained  there  on  a  diplomatic 
mission,  to  arrange  relations  between  Plym 
outh  and  the  new  Puritan  Commonwealth. 
This  was  one  of  his  four  missions  to  Eng 
land.  Bradford  was  the  administrative  head 
of  Plymouth ;  Standish,  its  military  chief ; 
Winslow,  its  statesman  and  man  of  affairs. 
He  is  the  only  Pilgrim  of  whom  we  have  an 
authentic  portrait. 


mained  upon 
the  basis  of  the  May 
flower  Compact  until 
King  William  III  annexed  the  colony  to  Massachusetts  in 
1691.  Nor  did  the  early  settlers  have  legal  title  to  their 
land.  In  1630,  however,  the  proprietary  New  England 
Council  granted  the  territory  to  Bradford  as  trustee  for  the 
colony.  Bradford  kept  the  grant  until  he  and  his  seven 
associates  had  paid  off  the  huge  debt  they  had  assumed 


THEIR  PLACE   IN   HISTORY  61 

for  the  colony.  Then,  in  1641,  with  solemn  ceremony,  he 
surrendered  his  rights  to  the  whole  body  of  settlers.  The 
colony  then  gave  legal  titles  to  the  assignments  of  land  it 
had  previously  made. 

The  colony  grew  slowly,  counting  less  than  three  hundred 
people  in  1630,  when  the  great  Puritan  migration  to 
Massachusetts  Bay  began.  The  Puritan  colonies,  piace  in 
then  established,  grew  much  faster  and  taught  ^story 
more  important  lessons  in  politics  and  economics.  Plymouth 
had  little  direct  influence,  in  either  of  these  ways,  upon  later 
American  history.  It  did  have  a  large  part  in  directing  the 
later  Puritan  colonies,  much  against  their  first  intention, 
toward  church  independency  and  so  toward  religious  de 
mocracy  ;  but  its  immediate  service,  after  all,  lay  in 
pointing  the  way  for  that  later  and  greater  migration. 
This  the  Pilgrims  did  ;  and  with  right  their  friends  wrote 
them  later,  when  the  little  colony  was  already  overshadowed 
by  its  neighbors,-  "Let  it  not  be  grievous  to  you  that  you 
have  been  but  instruments  to  break  the  ice  for  others :  the  honor 
shall  be  yours  till  the  world's  end" 


CHAPTER  IV 

MASSACHUSETTS  BAY 

I.   THE  FOUNDING 

God  hath  sifted  a  nation,  that  he  might  send  choice  grain  into  this  wilder 
ness.  —  WILLIAM  STOUGHTON,  "Election  Sermon"  in  1690. 

ONE  of  the  several  partnerships  of  English  merchants 
engaged  in  the  New  England  fisheries  (and  so  in  establish- 
The  Com  *n£  subsidiary  stations  along  the  coast)  finally 
pany  for  became  incorporated  as  The  Company  for  Massa- 
Massa-  chusetts  Bay.  In  the  spring  of  1628  this  Com 
pany  bought  from  the  New  England  Council  the 
territory  between  the  Charles  and  the  Merrimac  rivers  (ex 
tending  west  to  the  Pacific),  and  during  the  summer  it  sent 
out  sixty  settlers  under  John  Endicott,  a  well-known  Puritan 
And  its  gentleman,  to  a  station  near  Cape  Ann.  A  few 
settlement  " old  settlers"  there  were  at  first  inclined  to  dis- 
under  pute  Endicott's  authority,  but  finally  they  recog 

nized  him  peaceably  as  head  of  the  settlement  — 
to   which  accordingly   he   gave   the   Hebrew   name   Salem 
(Peace) . 

A  year  later  (March  14,  1629),  the  Massachusetts  Com 
pany  secured  a  charter  from  King  Charles.  At  the  time  this 
The  Charter  "First  Charter  of  Massachusetts  Bay"  (as  it  came 
of  Massa-  to  be  called  later)  was  merely  a  grant  to  the 
ay  commercial  proprietary  company  in  England.  It 
confirmed  their  title  to  the  land  they  had  bought  from  the 
New  England  Council,  and  it  gave  them  jurisdiction  over 
settlers,  similar  to  the  authority  possessed  by  other  coloniz 
ing  companies  in  England,  though  more  restricted.  It  did  not 
authorize  capital  punishment,  martial  law,  control  over  im 
migration,  or  coinage  of  money,  though  all  these  powers 
were  later  exercised  under  it. 

62 


THE  FOUNDING  63 

The  Company  now  busied  itself  diligently  in  collecting 
supplies  of  all  sorts  and  in  seeking  out  desirable  emigrants 
of  various  trades.  In  May  of  1629  it  sent  out  its  second 
expedition,  of  some  200  settlers,  led  by  Francis  Higginson, 
a  Puritan  minister.  Soon  after,  a  Puritan  church  was 
organized  in  Salem. 

So  far  the  history  of  the  colony  is  like  that  of  other  com 
mercial  plantations.  Most  of  the  settlers  were  "servants," 
and  rather  a  worthless  lot.  The  chief  men  were  Puritans 
because  it  was  easier  just  then  for  an  emigration  from  England 
to  find  fit  leaders  among  the  Puritans  than  among  other 
classes ;  and  the  proprietary  Company  was  Puritan,  on  the 
whole,  because  almost  the  whole  merchant  class  in  England 
was  Puritan.  But  there  is  no  evidence  that  anyone  was 
planning,  as  yet,  to  build  a  Puritan  colony.  Later  in  this 
same  summer  of  1629,  however,  a  new  colonizing  movement 
began,  with  that  special  purpose. 

This  new  movement  was  due  to  a  new  danger  to  Puritan 
ism  in  England.     For  years,  despite  the  strenuous  efforts 
of  the  Puritans,  the  English   Church   had   been  Thecoioniz- 
carried  farther  and  farther  away  from  their  ideals.  ing  move- 
Bishop   Laud,    the   tireless   leader    of   the   High-  becomes 
church   movement,    was   ardently    supported    by  Puritan 
King    Charles.     All    high    ecclesiastical    offices    had    been 
turned  over  to  Laud's  followers;    and  his  "High  Commis 
sion"  court,  with  dungeon  and  pillory,  was  now  ready  to 
drive  Puritan  pastors  from  their  parishes. 

The   Puritans   had   rested   their  hope  upon   parliament. 
They  made  the  great  majority  in  the  House  of  Commons ; 
and  with  the  meeting  of  the  third  parliament  of 
Charles  (1628),  their  reform  seemed  on  the  verge  mentof  the 
of  success.     That  parliament  extorted  the  King's 
assent  to  the  famous  "  Petition  of  Right  " ;  and, 
in  the  winter  of  1629,  it  began  vigorously  to  regulate  the 
Church.     But  the  King  struck  a  despotic  blow.     March  2, 
he   dissolved  parliament,   sent   its    leaders   to   the   Tower, 
and  entered  upon  a  system  of  absolute  rule.     For  eleven 


64  MASSACHUSETTS  BAY 

years  no  parliament  was  to  meet  in  England.  Religious  re 
form  and  political  liberty  had  gone  down  in  common  ruin, 
the  end  of  which  no  man  then  could  see.  The  gloom  of 
English  Puritans  at  this  outlook  is  expressed  in  a  letter 
(June,  1629)  from  John  Winthrop  in  London  to  his  wife  at 
their  manor  house  :  - 

"I  am  verily  persuaded  God  will  bringe  some  heavye  Affliction 
upon  this  Land,  and  that  speedy  lye."  The  times,  he  continues, 
grow  worse  and  worse ;  all  the  other  churches  (outside  England) 
have  been  smitten  and  made  to  drink  the  cup  of  tribulation  even 
unto  death.  England,  seeing  all  this,  had  not  turned  from  its  evil 
ways.  "Therefore  He  is  turninge  the  Cuppe  towards  us  also, 
and  because  we  are  the  last,  our  portion  must  be  to  drink  the  verye 
dreggs." 

The  continent  of  Europe  offered  no  hope.  Every  form  of 
Protestantism  there  seemed  doomed.  Wallenstein's  victo- 
NO  hope  in  rious  troopers  were  turning  the  Protestant  prov- 
Europe  inces  of  Germany  into  wilderness  homes  for  wild 
beasts ;  and  in  France  the  all-powerful  Richelieu  had  crushed 
the  Huguenots.  Accordingly,  the  more  dauntless  of  the 
English  Puritans  turned  their  eyes  to  the  New  World.  And 
there  they  saw  a  marvelous  opportunity.  At  Plymouth  was 
the  colony  of  the  Separatists,  not  large,  but  safely  past  the 
stage  of  experiment ;  while  close  by  was  the  prosperous  be 
ginning  of  a  commercial  colony  controlled  by  a  Puritan 
company  in  England  and  managed  on  the  spot  by  well- 
known  Puritans  like  Endicott  and  Higginson.  How  natural 
to  try  to  convert  this  Massachusetts  into  a  refuge  for  Low- 
church  Puritanism,  such  as  Plymouth  already  was  for  "Puri 
tans  of  the  Separation." 

But  the  leaders  of  this  new  movement  had  no  idea  of 
becoming  part  of  a  mere  plantation  governed  by  a  distant 
The  Cam-  proprietary  company,  however  friendly.  They 
bridge  were  of  the  ruling  aristocracy  of  England,  - 

Agreement,       .         .  „     ,     .  .  . 

August,  justices  ot  their  counties,  and,  on  occasion,  mem- 
1629  bers  Of  parliament.  And  so  a  number  of  them 

gathered,    by    long    horseback    journeys,    and    signed    the 


THE  CAMBRIDGE  AGREEMENT  65 

famous  Cambridge  Agreement  (August  25),  promising  one 
another  solemnly  that  they  would  embark  for  Massachu 
setts  with  their  families  and  fortunes,  if  they  could  find  a 
way  to  take  with  them  the  charter  and  the  "whole  government" 
A  proposal  to  transfer  the  government  of  the  Company  to 
America  had  been  made  a  month  before  at  the  July  meeting 
of  the  Company  in  London.  The  plan  was  novel  to  most  of 
the  members ;  but  in  September,  after  repeated  debates,  it 
was  approved.  Commercial  motives  faded  beside  the 
supreme  desire  to  provide  a  safe  refuge  for  Puritan  principles. 
The  new  men  of  the  Cambridge  Agreement  now  bought 
stock ;  many  old  stockholders  drew  out ;  the  old  officers 
resigned,  since  they  did  not  wish  to  emigrate;  A  "  corpora- 
and  John  Winthrop,  the  most  prominent  of  the  tion  colony" 

i     tt  ?5     fr\  .   i         with  the 

new    men,    was    elected       governor       (October,  charter  in 

1629).  The  next  spring,  Winthrop  led  to  Massa-  America 
chusetts  a  great  Puritan  migration,  —  the  most  remarkable 
colonizing  expedition  that  the  world  had  ever  seen.  For 
the  first  time  a  proprietary  corporation  removed  to  its  col 
ony.  Colony  and  corporation  merged.  Massachusetts  be 
came  a  corporate  colony  and  a  Puritan  commonwealth. 

In  May,  1629,  Endicott  had  a  hundred  settlers  at  Salem. 
In  June,  when  Higginson  arrived  with  two  hundred  more, 
another    plantation   was  begun   at   Charlestown.1 
Now,   in   the   summer   of    1630,    seventeen  ships  winthrop's 
brought  two  thousand  settlers  to  Massachusetts,  settlement 
and    six    new     towns     were    started,  —  Boston, 
Dorchester,    Watertown,  Roxbury,   and  minor  settlements 
at    Lynn    (Saugus)    and    Newtown,    afterward    Cambridge 
(map,  p.  99). 

But  the  immigrants  found  conditions  sadly  different 
from  their  expectations.  Two  hundred  returned  home  in  the 

1  The  next  winter  slew  nearly  a  third  of  the  colonists ;  and  in  June  of  1630  Win 
throp  found  the  survivors  starving  and  demoralized.  Four  fifths  of  them  were 
servants  of  the  company;  but  they  had  accomplished  nothing,  and  Winthrop 
thought  it  cheaper  to  free  them  than  to  feed  them.  There  were  also  seven  other 
little  settlements  along  the  coast  —  like  that  of  Blackstone  at  Boston  —  with  a 
total  population  of  some  fifty  souls,  remnants  of  the  commercial  attempts  mentioned 
above. 


66  MASSACHUSETTS  BAY 

ships  that  brought  them,  or  sought  better  prospects  in 
other  colonies ;  and  two  hundred  more  died  before  Decem- 
Eariy  ber.  Immediately  on  his  arrival,  Winthrop,  in 

hardships  fear  of  famine  before  the  next  summer,  wisely 
hurried  back  a  ship  for  supplies.  Its  prompt  return,  in 
February,  saved  the  colony.  According  to  one  story,  Win 
throp  had  just  given  his  last  measure  of  meal  to  a  destitute 
neighbor.  Meantime  the  deserters  spread  such  discourage 
ment  in  England  that  for  the  next  two  years  emigration 
to  Massachusetts  ceased.  In  1633,  however,  it  began  again. 
Soon  after,  the  King  seemed  for  a  time  to  have  established 
a  legal  claim  to  the  power  of  arbitrary  taxation  (in  the 
famous  "ship-money"  controversy).  This  gave  new  im 
petus  to  the  Puritan  emigration,  and  it  went  on,  at  the 
average  volume  of  three  thousand  people  a  year,  until  the 
Long  Parliament  was  summoned. 

Thus  the  eleven  years  of  "No  Parliament"  in  England  saw 
twenty-five  thousand  selected  Englishmen  transported  to 
"The  Great  New  England.  This  was  the  "Great  Migration" 
Migration,"  of  1630-1640.  In  1640  the  movement  stopped 
1630-1640  ghort  Says  \yinthrop,  "The  parliament  in  Eng 
land  setting  upon  a  general  reformation  both  in  church  and 
state,  .  .  .  this  caused  all  men  to  stay  in  England  in  expec 
tation  of  a  New  World"  there.  Indeed,  the  migration 
turned  the  other  way ;  and  many  of  the  boldest  and  best 
New  England  Puritans  hurried  back  to  the  old  home,  now 
that  there  was  a  chance  to  fight  for  Puritan  principles 
there.  Winthrop 's  third  son  and  one  of  his  nephews  went 
back  and  rose  to  the  rank  of  general  under  Cromwell, 
while  the  Reverend  Hugh  Peter,  —  rather  a  troublesome 
busybody  in  the  colony,  —  became  Cromwell's  chaplain. 
Such  facts  help  us  to  understand  that  the  larger  figures  on 
the  small  New  England  stage,  like  Winthrop  and  his  gallant 
son  John  Winthrop,  Jr.,  were  fit  companions  for  the  greatest 
actors  on  the  great  European  stage  in  that  great  day. 

The  sudden  stop  in  immigration  caused  serious  industrial  de 
pression.  Until  that  time  the  colony  had  been  unable  to  raise 
sufficient  supplies  for  its  use.  Newcomers  brought  money  with 


MINGLED  MOTIVES  67 

them,  and  gladly  paid  for  cattle  and  food  the  price  in  England  plus 
the  cost  of  transportation.  In  an  instant  this  was  changed.  The 
colony  had  more  of  such  supplies  than  it  could  use,  and  high  freights 
made  export  impossible.  Both  Bradford  and  Winthrop  lament 
the  fall  in  prices,  —  for  a  cow  from  £20  to  £5,  etc.,  —  without 
very  clear  ideas  as  to  its  cause.  The  phenomenon  has  been  re 
peated  many  times  on  our  moving  frontier. 

New  England  had  no  further  immigration  of  consequence 
until  after  the  Revolution.     But  this  coming  of  the  Puritans, 
during  England's   ten  hopeless   years, '  is  one  of  And 
the  fruitful  facts  in   history.       The   twenty-five  influence  on 
thousand  are  the  ancestors  of  perhaps  a  sixth  of  American 
our  population  to-day ;   and  we  owe  to  them  much 
more  than  a  sixth  of  our  higher  life  in  America.     Said  an  old 
Puritan  preacher,   with  high  insight,   "God   hath  sifted  a 
nation,  that  he  might  send  choice  grain  into  this  wilderness." 
That  sifting  took  place  just  when  England  had  been  lifted 
to  her  loftiest   pitch    of  moral  grandeur,  during  the  most 
heroic  episode  of  her  most  heroic  century,  and  the  "choice 
grain"  has   given   to   America   not   only   the   troublesome 
"New   England   conscience"    but  also  that  finer  thing,  a 
share  in  the  Puritan's  faith  in  ideals. 

True,  motives  were  not  unmixed.     The  twenty -five  thou 
sand   were  not   all  Puritans;    and  the  Puritans  were  not 
all  saints.     Some  little  communities  were  made  Qther 
up  wholly  of  rude  fishermen.     Old  Cotton  Mather  motives 
tells  how  a  preacher  from  another  town,  visiting  besides  the 
Marblehead    and    praising    the    devotion   of   the 
people  to  religious  principle,  was  interrupted  by  a  rough 
voice,  -    "You  think  you  are  talking  to  the  people  of  the 
Bay:    we  came  here   to  catch   fish."      Then   the  Puritan 
settlements  themselves  contained  many  "servants."     Win 
throp    alone    brought    in    his    "household"    some    twenty 
male  servants,  several  of    whom  were  married.     Many  of 
this  servant  population  were  a  bad  lot,  with  the  natural 
vices  of  an  irresponsible,  untrained,  hopeless  class.     On  the 
voyage,  cheats  and  drunkards  from  among  them  had  to 


68  MASSACHUSETTS  BAY 

receive  severe  punishment ;  and,  arrived  in  America,  the 
better  ones  were  sometimes  demoralized.  They  saw  vaster 
chance  for  free  labor  than  they  had  ever  dreamed  —  but 
they  had  ignorantly  bound  themselves  to  service  through 
the  best  years  of  life.  Brooding  on  this  led  some  to  crime  or 
suicide. 

The  great  body  of  the  Puritans  themselves  had  been  shop 
keepers,  artisans,  and  small  farmers  in  England.  They  were 
plain,  uneducated  men  who  jollowed  a  trusted  minister  or 
an  honored  neighbor  of  the  gentry  class.  In  the  main  they 
came,  not  to  build  an  ideal  state,  like  their  leaders,  but 
merely  to  get  away  from  the  pressure  of  poverty.  They  had 
felt  keenly  the  force  of  Winthrop's  plea  :  - 

"This  Land  growes  weary  of  her  Inhabitants,  soe  as  man,  who  is 
the  most  pretious  of  God's  creatures,  is  here  ...  of  less  prise 
among  us  than  an  horse  or  a  sheepe  .  .  .  Why  then  should  we 
stand  striving  here  .  .  .  (many  men  spending  as  much  labour  and 
coste  to  ...  keepe  an  acre  or  tuoe  of  Land  as  would  procure  many 
hundred  as  good  or  better  in  another  Countrie)  and  in  the  mean 
time  suffer  a  whole  Continent,  fruitfull  and  convenient,  to  lie 
waste?" 

Nor  were  the  greatest  of  the  Puritans  moved  by  religious 
motives  only.  They,  too,  expected  to  better  their  worldly 
condition.  Even  John  Winthrop  had  been  induced  to 
emigrate,  in  part,  by  the  decay  of  his  fortune  in  England. 
As  he  explained,  in  the  third  person,  to  his  friends,  "His 
meanes  heer  are  soe  shortened  as  he  shall  not  be  able  to 
continue  in  the  same  place  and  callinge  [as  before] ;  and 
so,  if  he  should  refuse  this  opportunitye,  that  talent  which  God 
hath  bestowed  upon  him  for  publick  service  were  like  to  be 
buried."  Many  others  of  the  1630  migration  had  :been 
deluded  by  "the  too  large  commendations"  of  New  Eng 
land  which  Higginson  had  sent  back  in  the  preceding 
summer. 

But  when  these  dreams  faded,  the  more  steadfast  spirits 
did  not  falter,  but  showed  bravely  the  higher  aims  that 
moved  them  most.  After  the  first  hard  months  Winthrop 


SUPREMACY  OF  RELIGIOUS  MOTIVES  69 

wrote  back  to  his  wife  in  noble  strain:    "I  do  hope  our 
days  of  affliction  will  soon  have  an  end  .  .   .   Yet  we  may 
not  look  for  great  things  here  .  .  .  [But]  we  here 
enjoy  God  and  Jesus  Christ.     I  thank  God,  I  like  Of  the 
so  well  to  be  here  as  I  do  not  repent  my  coming ;  religi°us 

i    -£   T  T  u  motive 

and  if  I  were  to  come  again,  I  would  not  have 
altered  my  course  though  I  had  forseen  all  these  afflic 
tions."  And  Dudley,  one  of  his  stout-hearted  companions, 
albeit  a  blunt  man  not  fond  of  soft  words,  speaks  with 
gentle  charity  of  "falling  short  of  our  expectations,  to  our 
great  prejudice,  by  means  of  letters  sent  us  hence  into 
England,  wherein  honest  men,  out  of  a  desire  to  draw  others 
to  them,  wrote  somewhat  hyperbollically  of  many  things 
here,"  and  adds  :  - 

"If  any  come  hether  to  plant  for  worldly  ends,  that  canne 
live  well  at  home,  hee  comits  an  errour  of  which  hee  will  soon 
repent  him.  But  if  for  spirittuall,  and  that  noe  particular  obstacle 
hinder  his  removeall,  he  may  finde  here  what  may  well  content 
him  :  viz.,  materialls  to  build,  fewell  to  burn,  ground  to  plant,  seas 
and  rivers  to  ffish  in,  a  pure  ayer  to  breath  in,  good  water  to  drinke 
till  wine  or  beare  canne  be  made,  —  which,  toegether  with  the 
cowes,  hoggs,  and  goates  brought  hether  allready,  may  suffice  for 
food ;  for  as  for  foule  and  venison,  they  are  dainties  here  as  well  as 
in  England.  Ffor  cloaths  and  beddinge  they  must  bringe  them 
with  them,  till  time  and  industry  produce  them  here.  In  a  word, 
wee  yett  enjoy  little  to  bee  envyed,  but  endure  much  to  bee  pytyed 
in  the  sicknes  and  mortalitye  of  our  people.  ...  If  any  godly 
men  out  of  religious  ends  will  come  over  to  helpe  us  ...  I  thinke 
they  cannot  dispose  of  themselves  or  their  estates  more  to  Gods 
glory  .  .  .  but  they  must  not  bee  of  the  poorer  sort  yett  for  diverse 
yeares.  Ffor  we  have  found  by  experience  that  they  have  hin 
dered,  not  furthered  the  worke.  And  for  profaine  and  deboshed 
persons,  their  oversight  in  comeinge  hether  is  wondered  at,  where 
they  shall  finde  nothing  to  content  them." 

After  the  first  winter  the  colony  was  never  in  danger  of 
absolute  ruin ;   but  the  settlers  long  suffered  more  than  the 
common  hardships  of  a  frontier.     They  did  not  Not  natural 
take  naturally  to  pioneer  life  as  our  later  back-  Pioneers 
woodsmen  did.     They  had  no  love  for  the  wilderness,  nor 


70  EARLY  MASSACHUSETTS 

could  they  adapt  themselves  readily  to  its  new  requirements. 
But  they  had  soberly  and  prayerfully  committed  life,  family, 
and  fortune  to  a  daring  experiment,  and,  like  the  Pilgrims, 
they  too  met  disaster  "with  answerable  courages."  Men, 
who  had  left  stately  ancestral  manor  houses,  took  up 
life  calmly  in  rudely  built  log  cabins,  and  never  looked 
backward.  Famous  ministers,  who  came  from  the  loveliest 
parish  churches  in  peaceful  England,  preached  and  gave  the 
communion,  and  married,  baptized,  and  buried,  in  bleak, 
barn-like  "meeting-houses,"  where  each  male  worshiper 
brought  his  musket.  A  pitiable  proportion  of  the  babies 
died,  year  by  year,  in  the  harsh  climate  and  draughty 


"MARKS"  OF  NAHNANACOMOCK  AND  PASSACONAWAY,  affixed  to  a  covenant  sub 
mitting  to  an  order  of  the  General  Court ;  dated  June  12,  1644.  From  the 
Massachusetts  State  Archives. 

houses,  and  a  shocking  number  of  brave,  uncomplaining, 
over-burdened  women  "but  took  New  England  on  the  way 
to  Heaven." 

Sparks  from  the  mud-plastered  fireplaces  and  chimneys 
set  many  a  fire.  Winthrop's  "Journal"  speaks  repeatedly 
Early  of  such  loss  —  home,  barn,  hay,  and  stock,  often  in 

hardships  ^he  deac}  of  a  winter  night;  and  Captain  John 
Smith  chances  to  mention  that  at  Plymouth  in  the  third 
winter  seven  of  the  thirty-two  homes  burned  down.  Wolves 
killed  the  calves  of  this  or  that  settler,  —  a  serious  disaster 
when  most  stock  had  still  to  be  brought  from  England. 
Men,  and  sometimes  women,  were  lost  in  short  trips  through 
the  woods,  and  found  frozen  to  death.  Inexperienced  fisher 
men  were  caught  by  storms  and  swept  away  to  sea.  Amid 
all  this,  the  gentry  kept  up  as  much  as  they  could  of  the  old 


FROM  SUFFERING  TO  COMFORT 


71 


English  stateliness.  They  trod  brier-tangled  forest  paths, 
clad  in  ruffles,  silk  hose,  long  cloak,  and  cocked  hat,  and 
solemnly  exchanged  garments,  in  token  of  friendship,  with 
painted  savages  who  now  and  then  stalked  haughtily  into 
the  villages  to  dine  with  the  chief  men. 

Slowly,  too,  the  colony  worked  its  way  to  a  rude  progress  to 
comfort.     In  1670   a  Boston  schoolmaster,  Ben-  rude 
jamin  Thompson,  pictures  for  us  how  - 

"  the  dainty  Indian  maize 

Was  eat  with  clam  shells  out  of  wooden  trays, 
Under  thatched  huts  without  the  cry  of  rent, 
And  the  best  sauce  to  every  dish  —  Content." 

From  the  first  New  England  furnished  a  variety  of  employ 
ments.  Every  free  man  had  his  plot  of  ground,  and  the 
"gentlemen"  soon  tried  —  not  very  successfully  varied 

-  to  farm  large  plantations  with  indentured  serv-  occupations 
ants.     The  stony  soil  forced  the  settlers  at  once  to  take  up 


THE  CRADOCK  HOUSE  (1636)  AT  MEDFORD.  This  is  the  oldest  brick  house  in  the 
United  States.  With  the  exception  of  the  porch  it  is  in  the  same  condition  as 
in  colonial  times.  Cradock  was  the  first  governor  (president)  of  the  Massa 
chusetts  Company  in  England.  He  never  came  to  America,  but  he  did  try  for 
a  time  to  till  some  large  grants  of  land  there  by  bands  of  indentured  servants. 
These  grants  were  made  him  in  recognition  of  his  services  in  England. 


EARLY  MASSACHUSETTS 


other  work  also.  Each  family  raised  a  few  pigs,  to  supply  the 
pork-barrel  —  and  the  straying  and  trespasses  of  these  unruly 
brutes  was  an  incessant  source  of  annoyance  and  even  of  dis 
sension.  As  soon  as  possible,  men  began  also  to  breed  cattle. 
The  fisheries  furnished  some  profitable  export  to  England,  to 

help  pay  for  European 
supplies  ;  and  from  the 
woods  that  reached  to 
their  doors,  the  settlers 
fashioned  staves  and 
clapboards  both  for 
home  use  and  for  export. 
Mills  to  grind  grain  ap 
peared  here  and  there, 
where  streams  provided 
water  power.  And,  in 
the  second  year,  New 
England's  famous  ship 
building  and  coasting 
trade  began,  when  Win- 
throp  launched  The 

mSr^BHm          M*Er^te>  Blessing  of  the  Bay  —  a 

if  f/          small    schooner,    which 

Ip  H^4r  traded  for  furs  with  the 

\^  «*w  Indians  and  with  Eng 

lish    settlements    along 

''$*«$%  the     coast,     from     the 

^^pPP*   ^  Kennebec   to   the  Con 

necticut.  Very  early 
some  primitive  "iron 
works"  began  to  extract 


A  KETTLE,  now  in  the  Lynn  Library,  said  to  be 
the  first  casting  made  in  America  —  at  the 
Lynn  (Saugus)  Iron  Works  in  1642.  Note 
the  graceful  lines.  In  1648  the  Lynn  Iron 
Furnace  turned  out  eight  tons  a  week. 


iron  from  the  easily 
worked  "bog"  deposits, 
and  to  "cast"  simple  implements.  In  1646  the  Massa 
chusetts  General  Court  gave  a  patent  to  Joseph  Jenks  for 
certain  improvements  on  the  scythe  which  gave  that  tool 
its  modern  form.  Brick  kilns  were  among  the  early  indus 
tries.  The  first  saw-mill  did  not  appear  until  1663  —  at 


DANGER  OF  ENGLISH  INTERFERENCE  73 

Salmon  Falls  in  New  Hampshire.  Soon  at  many  points 
such  mills  were  turning  the  forest  about  them  into  rough 
lumber  for  export  to  England,  while,  at  clearings  remote  from 
water  power,  the  logs  were  burned  into  potash,  or  pearl  ash. 
Potash  in  that  day  was  indispensable  in  manufacturing 
woolen  goods  and  glass  and  in  making  soap,  and  all  through 
the  colonial  period  large  amounts  were  sent  to  Europe. 

For  a  time,  there  was  danger  that  England  might  interfere 
with   the   Massachusetts   experiment.     The   colony's   land, 
which  had  been  bought  from  the  New  England  Danger  of 
Council  in  1628,  was  part  of  a  tract  granted  earlier  English 
by  that  body  to  Gorges  (p.  47).     Probably  the  * 
trouble   came   merely   from   ignorance   of   American    geog 
raphy.     The  Massachusetts  charter  of  1629  (from  the  King) 
strengthened  the  colony's  title ;    and  in  1631   the  colonial 
government  arrested  two  of  Gorges'  agents,  and,  after  severe 
handling,  shipped  them  back  to  England. 

Gorges  finally  got  the  matter  before  the  King's  Council, 
and  that  body  ordered  the  leaders  of  the  original  Massachu 
setts  Company  to  produce  the  charter  and  explain  these 
acts  of  the  colonial  government.  When  it  was  discovered  that 
the  charter  was  in  America,  a  series  of  peremptory  demands 
were  sent  to  the  authorities  there  for  its  return,  and  legal 
processes  were  begun  in  the  English  courts  to  overthrow  it. 
Meantime,  in  1635,  the  New  England  Council  surrendered 
its  charter,  and  Charles  appointed  Gorges  "governor  general" 
over  all  New  England.  Gorges  began  to  build  a  ship  and  to 
get  together  troops. 

The  leaders  in  Massachusetts  did  not  weaken.  After  con 
sulting  with  the  ministers,  it  was  agreed,  "that,  if  a  general 
governor  were  sent,  we  ought  not  to  accept  him,  but  defend 
our  lawful  possessions  (if  we  are  able) ;  otherwise,  to  avoid 
or  protract."  At  its  next  meeting  the  General  Court  voted 
a  tax  of  £"00  (many  times  larger  than  had  before  been 
known  in  the  colony),  and  began  a  series  of  fortifications, 
not  on  the  frontier  against  the  Indians,  but  on  the  coast  to 
resist  an  English  ship.  Bullets  were  made  legal  tender  in 


74  EARLY  MASSACHUSETTS 

place  of  small  coin;  and  a  committee  was  appointed  "to 
manage  any  war  that  may  befall,"  with  power  to  establish 
martial  law:  No  one  thought  of  sending  back  the  charter. 
Quaint  excuses  were  sent  in  plenty;  and,  when  these 
wore  thin,  the  royal  orders  were  quietly  ignored,  and,  at 
last,  openly  defied. 

This  policy  of  "protracting"  won.  Gorges'  ship  was 
ruined  by  an  accident  in  launching,  and  he  could  not  get 
Victory  for  money  to  build  another  or  to  keep  his  troops  to- 
Massa-  gether.  The  King,  economizing  rigidly  in  the 
midst  of  the  "ship-money"  troubles,  would  give 
commissions,  but  no  gold.  The  English  courts  did  finally 
declare  the  charter  void  (1638) ;  but  the  ship  that  brought 
word  of  this  brought  news  also  of  the  rising  of  the  Scots, 
and  the  colony  "thought  it  safe"  bluntly  to  refuse  obedi 
ence  to  the  "strict  order"  for  the  surrender  of  the  docu 
ment,  even  hinting  rebellion.  In  England,  matters  moved 
rapidly  to  the  Civil  War,  and  Massachusetts  was  left  un 
troubled  to  work  out  her  experiment.  After  the  Restora 
tion  in  England,  the  legal  authorities  there  decided  that,  since 
the  charter  had  not  actually  been  surrendered,  the  process 
against  it  was  ineffective. 

II.    ARISTOCRACY    VS.   DEMOCRACY 

The  Puritan  fathers  did  not  find  it  easy  to  stretch  the 
charter  of  a  merchant  company  into  a  constitution  for  a 
Dominant  commonwealth — especially  as  that  common  weal  th 
aristocracy  was  pUHe(l  nOw  this  way,  now  that,  by  contend 
ing  aristocratic  and  democratic  factions.  Early  Massa 
chusetts  was  predominantly  aristocratic.  The  charter  pro 
vided  that  all  important  matters  of  government  should  be 
settled  by  the  stockholders  ("freemen")  in  four  "General 
Courts"  each  year.  But  only  some  twelve  freemen  of  the 
corporation  had  come  to  America.  These  were  all  of  the 
gentry  class,  —  men  of  strong  character  and,  most  of  them,  of 
prudent  judgment.  Before  leaving  England,  they  had  all 
been  made  magistrates  (governor,  deputy  governor,  and 


ARISTOCRACY   VS.  DEMOCRACY  75 

"Assistants").  Even  without  such  office,  and  merely  as 
freemen,  the  twelve  had  sole  authority  to  rule  the  two  thou 
sand  settlers  and  to  make  laws  for  them;  and  the  little 
oligarchy  began  at  once  to  use  this  tremendous  power.  The 
first  meeting  of  Assistants  in  America  fixed  the  wages  of 
laborers,  forbidding  a  carpenter  or  mason  to  take  more  than 
two  shillings  a  day. 

From  the  first  a  democratic  movement  challenged  this  oli 
garchic  government.  The  first  General  Court  was  held 
in  October,  1630.  By  death  and  removal,  the  f 

,  „     J  iiii  •   ji     Challenged 

twelve  possessors  01  power  had  shrunk  to  eight,  by  a  demo- 
These  eight  gentlemen  found  themselves  con-  cratic  move- 
fronted  by  a  gathering  of  one  hundred  and  nine 
sturdy  settlers  asking  to  be  admitted  freemen.  This  was 
a  united  demand  for  citizenship,  by  nearly  all  the  heads 
of  families  above  the  station  of  unskilled  laborers.  To 
refuse  the  request  was  to  risk  the  wholesale  removal  of 
dissatisfied  colonists  either  to  Maine,  where  Gorges  would 
welcome  them,  or  to  Plymouth  ;  to  grant  it  was  to  endanger 
the  peculiar  Puritan  commonwealth  at  which  the  leaders 
aimed,  and  to  introduce  more  democracy  than  they  believed 
safe. 

In  this  dilemma,  the  shrewd  leaders  tried  to  give  the  shadow 
and  keep  the  substance.  They  postponed  action  on  the 
application  until  the  next  spring.  Meantime  they  passed 
two  laws  —  in  violation  of  the  charter  :  first  (October,  1630), 
that  the  Assistants,  instead  of  the  whole  body  of  freemen, 
should  make  laws  and  choose  the  governor ;  and  second 
(May,  1631),  that  the  Assistants  should  hold  office  during 
good  behavior,  instead  of  all  going  out  of  office  at  the 
end  of  a  year  as  the  charter  ordered.  Then  they  ad 
mitted  116  new  freemen,  having  left  them  no  power  ex 
cept  that  of  electing  new  Assistants  "when  these  are  to 
be  chosen." 

The  applicants,  in  their  anxiety  to  get  into  the  body  politic, 
agreed  for  a  time  to  these  usurpations.  Indeed  they  did  not 
know  what  their  rights  should  be.  The  charter  was  locked 
in  Winthrop's  chest,  and  only  the  magistrates  had  read 


76  EARLY  MASSACHUSETTS 

it  or  heard  it.  For  a  year  more,  that  little  body,  now 
shrunken  to  seven  or  eight,  continued  to  rule  the  colony, 
admitting  a  few  new  freemen,  now  and  then,  to  a  shadowy 
citizenship. 

The  chief  founders  of  New  England  had  a  very  real  dread 
of  democracy.  John  Cotton,  the  greatest  of  the  clerical 
Excursus :  leaders,  wrote  :  - 

the  Puritan 

altitude'  "Democracy  I  do  not  conceive  that  God  did  ever 

toward  ordain  as  a  fit  government  for  either  church  or  corn- 

democracy  mon wealth.  //  the  people  be  governors,  who  shall  be 
governed  ?  As  for  monarchy  and  aristocracy,  they  are  both  clearly 
approved  and  directed  in  the  Scriptures.  ..." 

And  the  great  Winthrop  always  refers  to  democracy  with 
aversion.  He  asserts  that  it  has  "no  warrant  in  Scripture," 
and  that  "among  nations  at  has  always  been  accounted  the 
meanest  and  worst  of  all  forms  of  government."  At  best, 
Winthrop  and  his  friends  believed  in  what  they  called  "a 
mixt  aristocracy":  the  people  (above  the  condition  of  day 
laborers)  might  choose  their  rulers  —  provided  they  chose 
from  still  more  select  classes ;  but  the  rulers  so  chosen  were 
to  possess  practically  absolute  power,  owning  their  offices 
as  an  ordinary  man  owned  his  farm. 

Calvin,  the  master  of  Puritan  political  thought,  teaches 
that  to  resist  even  a  bad  magistrate  is  "to  resist  God." 
His  language  is  followed  closely  by  Winthrop.  In  1639, 
after  the  people  in  Massachusetts  had  secured  a  little 
power,  the  magistrates  tricked  them  out  of  most  of  it  for 
a  while  by  a  law  decreasing  the  number  of  deputies,  so  that 
they  should  not  outvote  the  aristocratic  magistrates  in  the 
Court.  Some  of  the  people  petitioned  modestly  for  the 
repeal  of  this  law.  Winthrop  looked  upon  the  petition  as 
"tending  to  sedition."  Said  he,  "When  the  people  have 
chosen  men,  to  be  their  rulers,  now  to  combine  together  .  .  . 
in  a  public  petition  to  have  an  order  repealed  .  .  .  savors 
of  resisting  an  ordinance  of  God.  For  the  people,  having 
deputed  others,  have  no  power  to  make  or  alter  laws  them- 


THE  WATERTOWN  PROTEST,  1032  77 

selves,  but  are  to  be  subject."  1  The  great  founders  of 
America  were  far  from  believing  in  government  "of  the 
people  and  by  the  people." 

The  first  protest  against  this  oligarchic  usurpation  came, 
after  good  English  precedent,  upon  a  matter  of  taxation. 
In  February,  1632,  the  Assistants  voted  a  tax  TheWater_ 
for  fortifications.  Watertown  was  called  upon  town  Pro- 
to  pay  eight  pounds.  The  Watertown  minister  test' 1632 
then  called  the  people  together  and  secured  a  resolution 
"that  it  was  not  safe  to  pay  moneys  after  that  sort,  for 
fear  of  bringing  themselves  and  posterity  into  bondage." 
Governor  Winthrop  at  once  summoned  the  men  of  Water- 
town  before  him  at  Boston  as  culprits,  rebuked  them  for 
their  "error,"  and  so  overawed  them  that  they  "made  a 
retraction  and  submission  .  .  .  and  so  their  offence  was 
pardoned."  Probably,  however,  on  the  walk  back  to 
Watertown  through  the  winter  night,  the  "error"  revived. 
Certainly,  during  the  next  months,  there  was  secret  demo 
cratic  plotting  and  sending  to  and  fro  among  the  towns  of 
which  we  have  no  record.  (Our  information  comes  almost 
wholly  from  the  brief  Colonial  Records  and  from  Win 
throp.  The  democrats  never  wrote  their  story.)  At  all 
events,  a  week  before  the  next  General  Court  met  in  May, 
Winthrop  warned  the  Assistants  "that  he  had  heard  the 
people  intended  ...  to  desire  [vote]  that  the  Assistants 
might  be  chosen  anew  every  year,  and  that  the  governor 
might  be  chosen  by  the  whole  court,  and  not  by  the  Assist 
ants  only."  These  were  charter  provisions,  of  which  the 
freemen  must  have  heard  some  rumor.  "Upon  this," 
adds  Winthrop's  Journal,  "Mr.  Ludlow  [an  Assistant] 
grew  into  a  passion  and  said  that  then  we  should  First  gain 
have  no  government,  but  there  would  be  an  in-  for  the 
terim  wherein  every  man  might  do  what  he  d 
pleased."  In  spite  of  such  silly  passion,  when  the  General 

1  The  quotations  from  Winthrop  come  from  his  History  of  New  England.  This 
has  been  printed  only  with  modernized  spelling.  When  a  Winthrop  quotation 
is  given  with  antique  spelling,  it  comes  from  his  Letters. 


78  EARLY  MASSACHUSETTS 

Court  met,  the  freemen  calmly  took  back  into  their  own  hands 
the  annual  election  of  governor  and  of  Assistants.  Then  they 
went  further,  and  sanctioned  the  Watertown  protest  by  de 
creeing  that  each  town  should  choose  two  representatives  to 
act  with  the  magistrates  in  matters  of  taxation. 

This  was  not  yet  representative  government.  The  new 
deputies  acted  in  taxation  only :  the  magistrates  kept  their 
usurped  power  to  make  laws.  True,  the  magistrates  now 
had  to  come  up  for  reelection  each  year,  but  this  was  little 
more  than  a  polite  form.  No  chance  was  given  to  nominate 
two  candidates  for  a  position,  and  then  to  choose  between 
them.  The  Secretary  of  the  Assistants  made  nominations  — 
in  some  such  form  as,—  "Mr.  Ludlow's  term  as  Assistant 
has  expired;  will  you  have  him  to  be  an  Assistant  again?" 
On  this  sort  of  nomination  the  people  had  to  vote  Yes  or  No, 
by  erection  of  hands.  Unless  they  first  •  rejected  an  old 
officer,  there  was  no  chance  to  elect  a  new  one. 

In  spite  of  such  drawbacks,  the  reform  of  1632  was  a 
democratic  advance.  Two  years  later  came  the  second 
step,  the  peaceful  revolution  of  1634- 

This  movement  began  as  a  protest  against  "special 
privilege."  The  Assistants  had  made  laws  to  favor  their 
Bitter  i  own  c^ass  ~  ~  Drying  repeatedly  to  keep  wages 
ing  against  down  to  the  old  level  of  England,  and  order- 
iati  n  *n^  that  swine  found  in  grain  fields  might  be 
killed.  Winthrop  speaks  often  of  the  high  cost 
of  food  and  other  necessities,  as  compared  with  English 
prices ;  but  he  was  honestly  dismayed  that  carpenters  should 
ask  more  than  the  old  English  wage.  Indeed  he  puts  the 
cart  before  the  horse,  and  blames  the  higher  cost  of  living 
upon  the  rise  in  wages,  quite  in  twentieth  century  style. 
As  to  the  swine  law,  —  the  poor  man  wanted  his  pig  to  find 
part  of  its  living  in  the  woods,  but  the  rich  men  were  not  will 
ing  to  fence  their  large  fields.  This  matter  caused  harder 
feeling  even  than  the  wage  laws. 

The  common  freemen  determined  to  stop  some  of  this 
"class  legislation."  In  April,  1634,  Governor  Winthrop 


REPRESENTATIVE  GOVERNMENT;   1634 


79 


sent  out  the  usual  notice  calling  all  freemen  to  a  General 
Court  in  May.  Soon  after,  on  a  given  day,  two  men  from 
each  of  the  eight  towns  met  at  Boston.  How  the  meeting 
was  arranged  and  the  ''committees"  chosen,  we  have  no 
record ;  but  again  there  must  have  been  much  democratic 
planning,  and  many  a  journey  through  the  forest,  to  secure 
this  "first  political  convention  in  America." 

The  "convention"  asked  to  see  the  charter.  After  read 
ing  it,  they  called  Winthrop's  attention  to  the  fact  that 

the    making    of    laws  introduction 
belonged  properly  to  <>fRePre- 

11  j  t    sentative 

the     Whole      body     OI    government, 

freemen  (now  some  1634 
200),  instead  of  to  the  nine  As 
sistants.  Winthrop  told  them 
loftily  that  the  freemen  did  not 
have  men  among  them  "quali 
fied  for  such  a  business."  He 
suggested,  however,  that  per 
haps  they  might  once  a  year 
choose  a  committee  to  make 
suggestions  to  the  Assistants. 
The  good  governor  felt  sure  - 
as  his  "Journal"  shows  —  that 
this  condescension  had  quieted 
the  trouble.  But  when  the 
General  Court  met  (May  14),  three  deputies  appeared  from 
each  of  the  eight  towns,  to  sit  with  the  Assistants,  not  merely 
to  suggest  laws,  but  to  make  them.  Representative  govern 
ment  had  begun. 

The  aristocrats  had  had  warning  that  their  power  was  in 
danger,  and  they  put  forward  their  leading  clerical  champion. 
John  Cotton  preached  the  usual  sermon  to  open  the  Court,  — - 

1  Cotton  could  use  sophistry  on  occasion  in  masterly  fashion  —  as  when  he 
argued  against 'free  speech  for  certain  dissenters,  that  [since  they  differed  from 
him]  they  must  "  sin  against  conscience,  and  so  it  could  not  be  against  conscience 
to  restrain  them."  Winthrop  tells  a  delicious  story  —  without  any  suspicion  of 
its  flavor  to  us  —  of  the  admission  of  Cotton's  wife  to  the  Boston  Church.  Church 
membership  in  England  was  no  longer  accepted,  but  a  new  confession  of  faith 


JOHN  COTTON. 1  From  the  engrav 
ing  after  a  portrait,  in  Drake's 
History  and  Antiquities  of  Boston. 


80  EARLY  MASSACHUSETTS 

"and  delivered  this  doctrine,  that  a  magistrate  ought  not  to 
be  turned  into  the  condition  of  a  private  man  without  just 
cause  [and  after  a  formal  trial],  no  more  than  the  magistrate 
may  not  turn  a  private  man  out  of  his  freehold,  etc.,  with 
out  like  public  trial."  This  was  a  claim  that  public  office 
was  private  aristocratic  property.  (At  another  time  Win- 
throp  tells,  with  approval,  how  Cotton  "showed  from  the 
Word  of  God  that  the  magistracy  ought  to  be  for  life.") 
The  answer  of  the  freemen  was  to  demand  a  ballot,  instead 
of  the  usual  "erection  of  hands,"  in  choosing  a  governor. 
Then  they  dropped  Winthrop  from  the  office  he  had  held 
for  four  years,1  and  fined  some  of  the  Assistants  for  illegal 
abuse  of  power.  They  also  ordered  jury  trial  for  all  im 
portant  criminal  cases,  and  admitted  81  new  freemen  whom 
the  Assistants  the  day  before  had  refused  to  admit. 

The  Court  then  made  the  revolution  permanent.  It  decreed 
that  every  General  Court  in  future  should  consist  (like 
this  one)  of  deputies  chosen  by  the  several  towns  and  of 
the  governor  and  Assistants.  Only  such  Courts  could  admit 
freemen,  lay  taxes,  or  make  laws.  The  May  Court  each 
year  was  also  to  be  a  Court  of  Elections :  at  the  opening  of 
this  Court,  all  freemen  might  be  present,  to  choose  governor 
and  Assistants.  For  the  most  part,  the  old  rulers  took 
these  changes  in  good  part,  quite  in  English  temper ;  and  the 
generous  Winthrop,  after  recording  his  defeat,  adds  magnan 
imously,  -  "This  Court  made  many  good  orders." 

Arepresen-  Massachusetts  had  now  grown  from  a  narrow 
aristocracy  oligarchy  into  a  representative  aristocracy.  It  was 

was  required.  Cotton  made  a  lengthy  and  eloquent  statement  for  himself,  and 
then  "  desired  the  elders  to  question  Mistress  Cotton  in  private,  and  that  she 
might  not  be  required  to  give  testimony  in  public,  which  was  against  the  Apostle's 
rule  and  woman's  modesty";  and,  this  being  agreed  to,  he  himself  then  "gave 
a  modest  testimony  of  her." 

1  The  aristocratic  doctrine  of  Cotton  was  further  rebuked  by  the  election  of 
a  new  governor  for  each  of  the  two  following  years.  Then,  in  a'  period  of  great 
trouble,  the  trusted  Winthrop  was  chosen  again,  and  kept  in  office  by  annual  elec 
tions,  except  for  five  years,  until  his  death  in  1649.  Even  in  1034,  Winthrop 
was  chosen  to  the  Board  of  Assistants;  but  Ludlow  (page  77)  was  dropped  alto 
gether  from  the  magistracy  —  the  first  action  of  that  sort  in  the  colony. 


SOCIAL  RANKS  81 

still  far  short  of  a  democracy.  There  was  even  more  aris 
tocracy  in  society  than  in  politics.  The  people  were  divided 
into  five  distinct  classes  :  - 

gentlemen,  who  alone  had  the  title  Master  (Mr.) ; 

skilled  artisans  and  freeholders,  the  backbone  of  the 
colony,  usually  addressed  as  "Goodman  Brown"  or  "Good 
man  Jones" ; 

unskilled  laborers,  for  whose  names  no  handle  was  needed, 
and  for  whom  indeed  the  surname  was  not  often  used ; 

servants,  who  usually  passed  finally  into  the  class  of  artisans 
or  laborers ; 

slaves,  of  whom  there  were  soon  a  small  number,  both 
Negro  and  Indian. 

Gentlemen  were  set  apart  from  the  lower  orders  almost 
as  distinctly  as  Lords  in  England  were  from  gentlemen. 
In  early  Massachusetts,  one  family  out  of  four-  . 
teen  belonged  to  this  aristocracy.  For  ordinary  privileges 
"people"  to  show  subordination  to  these  social  of "  gentle- 
superiors  was  about  as  essential  as  to  obey  written 
law.  And  the  law  express^  gave  some  privileges  to  the 
aristocracy.  For  instance,  in  1631,  Mr.  Josias  Plaistowe 
was  convicted  of  stealing  corn  from  the  Indians.  His 
servants -- who  had  assisted,  under  orders — were  con 
demned  to  be  flogged  ;  but  the  court  merely  fined  Plaistowe 
and  ordered  that  thenceforward  he  should  be  called  "by 
the  name  of  Josias,  and  not  Mr'.,  as  formerlie."  This 
was  severe  punishment,  equivalent  to  degrading  an  officer 
to  the  ranks.  For  another  offense,  Josias  would  no  doubt 
be  whipped,  like  an  ordinary  man.  The  aristocracy  were 
always  exempt  from  corporal  punishment  by  custom;  and 
in  1641  this  exemption  was  put  into  written  law.  Ten 
years  later  the  court  declared  its  "utter  detestation  .  .  . 
that  men  or  weomen  of  meane  condition  should  take  uppon 
them  the  garbe  of  gentlemen  by  wearing  gold  or  silver  lace 
or  buttons  ...  or  to  walk  in  great  bootes,  or  woemen  of 
the  same  rancke  to  weare  silke  or  tiffany  hoodes,"  and  then 
proceeded  to  impose  a  fine  of  "tenn  shillings  for  every  such 
offense." 


82  EARLY  MASSACHUSETTS 

The  franchise,  too,  was  far  from  democratic.  The  voting 
''freemen"  were  a  small  part  of  the  free  men.  The  General 
The  Court  of  1631,  which  admitted  the  first  new  free- 

.franchise  men,  ordered  that  thereafter  only  church  members 
should  be  made  freemen.  This  did  not  mean  that  all  church 
members  could  vote  :  it  meant  that  voters  were  to  be  selected 
only  from  church  members.  Unskilled  laborers,  servants, 
even  slaves,  were  admitted  to  the  churches,  but  never  to  full 
citizenship.  Only  about  one  man  out  of  four  could  vote  at 
any  time  in  colonial  Massachusetts. 

III.   DEVELOPMENT  OF  POLITICAL  MACHINERY 

The  Court  of  1634  voted  by  ballot  when  it  unseated 
Winthrop.  We  know  this  fact  from  the  note,  "chosen  by 
First  o  papers,"  in  the  margin  of  Winthrop's  manuscript, 
iiticaiPuse  opposite  the  name  of  the  new  governor.  "  Papers  " 
of  the  ballot  were  used  as  an  aid  to  the  democratic  faction.  A 
secret  vote  protected  the  voters  from  being  over 
awed  by  Winthrop's  influential  friends. 

This  was  the  first  political  use  of  the  ballot  in  America, 
though  "papers"  had  been  used  once  before  in  a  church 
election  at  Salem.  This  method  of  voting,  though  not  in 
use  for  parliamentary  elections,  was  common  in  boroughs 
and  in  large  business  corporations  in  England.1  One  of 
these  business  corporations  had  now  become  a  political 
corporation  in  Massachusetts ;  and  nothing  could  be  more 
natural  than  for  it  to  make  use  of  the  ballot  as  soon  as 
serious  differences  of  opinion  arose. 

After  1635,  law  required  the  Court  of  Elections  to  use 
papers  in  choosing  governor  and  Assistants.  For  governor 
Evolution  of  each  voter  wrote  upon  his  ballot  the  name  of  his 
the  ballot  choice,  or  found  some  one  to  write  it  for  him.  But 
for  some  time  the  Assistants  were  chosen  one  at  a  time  much 
in  the  old  way.  The  Secretary  nominated  one  of  those  al 
ready  in  office.  Then  the  people  deposited  their  ballots. 

1  See  page  36  for  reference  to  the  ballot  in  elections  of  the  London  Company. 
The  "rules"  of  that  body  ordered  that  its  elections  should  be  by  ballot. 


EVOLUTION  OF  THE  BALLOT  83 

Those  in  favor  of  the  nomination  marked  their  papers  with 
a  scroll  or  cross  —  which  did  not  call  for  ability  to  write ;  those 
opposed  voted  blank  ballots.  In  1643  the  law  ordered  that 
kernels  of  corn  should  be  used  instead  of  paper  ballots,  - 
white  kernels  to  signify  election ;  and  other  colors,  rejection. 
If  the  candidate  were  defeated,  another  nomination  was 
made  for  his  place,  to  be  accepted  or  rejected  in  like  manner. 
There  was  no  opportunity,  so  far,  to  choose  between  two 
candidates,  and  the  man  in  office  still  had  a  tremendous 
advantage. 

The  next  step  was  to  introduce  the  ballot  in  town  elections. 
This  was  done  first  at  Boston,  in  December,  1634,  when  a 
committee  was  chosen  to  divide  public  lands  among  the 
inhabitants.  The  people,  says  Winthrop,  "feared  that  the 
richer  men  would  give  the  poorer  sort  no  great  proportions 
of  land,"  and  this  time,  too,  they  used  the  ballot  to  leave  out 
the  aristocratic  element. 

In  all  these  cases  the  advantage  of  the  ballot  lay  in  its 
secrecy.  But  there  is  another  way  in  which  the  ballot  aids 
democracy.  Its  use  makes  it  possible  for  men  to  vote  in 
their  own  towns,  in  small  election  districts  instead  of  being 
required  all  to  come  to  one  central  point.  Such  an  arrange 
ment  permits  more  voters  to  take  part  in  elections.  Soon 
the  men  of  Massachusetts  used  the  ballot  for  this  purpose. 
In  March,  1636,  the  General  Court  ordered  that  the  freemen 
of  six  new  outlying  towns  might  send  "proxies"  to  the  next 
Court  of  Elections.  During  the  next  December,  the 
governor  resigned,  and  a  special  election  was  called.  "In 
regard  of  the  season,"  any  freemen  were  authorized  "to 
send  their  votes  in  writing."  And  the  next  spring  (March, 
1637)  this  method  of  voting  for  governor  and  Assistants  was 
made  permanent.  Out  of  the  use  of  proxies  a  true  ballot  in 
the  several  towns  had  developed. 

When  men  came  to  elect  the  governor  and  Assistants  in 
the  several  towns,  as  just  described,  instead  of  all  coming  to 
Boston  for  the  purpose,  it  was  necessary,  of  course,  Nominations 
to  know  in  advance  from  what  names  the  choice  was  for  office 
to  be  made.     The  old  system  of  nomination  broke  down ; 


84 


EARLY  MASSACHUSETTS 


and  the  colony  began  to  make  use,  sometimes  of  "primary 
elections"  sometimes  of  crude  "  nominating  conventions"  made 
up  of  delegates  from  the  various  towns. 


COLONIAL  FIREPLACE  AND  UTENSILS,  "BROAD  HEARTH,"  SAUGUS.  The  house, 
built  in  1646,  was  the  home  of  the  first  iron  founder  in  America,  whose  works 
were  near  by.  Cf.  page  72. 

Judicial  development  kept  pace  with  political  growth.     In 

the  first  summer  in  Massachusetts,  a  man  was  found  dead 

under  suspicious  circumstances.     The  magistrates 

Evolution  .          , i          ,      j          « 

of  the  appointed  a  body  ot  sworn  men  to  investigate, 

judicial  This  coroner's  jury  accused  a  certain  Palmer  of 
murder.  Palmer  was  then  tried  by  a  trial  jury 
(petit  jury)  of  twelve  men.  All  this  was  in  accord  with 
custom  in  England.  No  Massachusetts  law  upon  the  matter 
had  been  passed. 

In  1634,  however,  the  General  Court  did  expressly  estab 
lish  trial  by  jury,  and  a  year  later  it  ordered  that  a  jury  of 
inquest  (grand  jury)  should  meet  twice  a  year,  to  present 
to  the  court  all  offenders  against  law  and  public  welfare. 
Thus  the  first  five  years  saw  the  complete  adoption  of  the 


THE   "BODY  OF  LIBERTIES"  85 

English  jury  system.  It  is  said  sometimes  —  with  much 
exaggeration  —  that  in  the  absence  of  written  law,  the 
Puritans  followed  the  Jewish  law.  But  in  this  supremely 
important  matter  of  legal  machinery,  they  turned  promptly 
not  to  the  Old  Testament  but  to  the  English  Common  Law. 

At  the  General   Court  in  May,   1635,  the  deputies  de 
manded  a  written  code  of  law.     The  magistrates  were  making 
law,  almost  at  will,  in  their  decisions,  after  cases  The  demand 
came  before  them;   and  "the  people  thought  their  for  written 
condition  very   unsafe,"   says  Winthrop,   "while  law 
so  much  power  rested  in  the  discretion  of  the  magistrates." 
The  democratic  demand   could   not   very   well   be  openly 


y/.1^  A,  J-" 


" 


NUMBER  1  OF  THE  "BODY  OF  LIBERTIES."     The  original  manuscript  is  now  in  the 

Boston  Athenaeum. 

denied ;  but  for  a  time  it  was  evaded  skillfully.  The 
Court  appointed  four  magistrates  to  prepare  a  code ;  but 
this  committee  failed  to  report.  A  second  committee  of 
"gentlemen"  was  equally  ineffective.  Then,  in  1638,  the 
Court  ordered  that  the  deputies  should  collect  suggestions 
from  the  freemen  of  their  several  towns,  and  present  them 
in  writing  to  a  new  committee  made  up  partly  of  deputies. 

Now  matters  began  to  move.  The  suggestions  from  the 
towns  were  reduced  to  form  in  1639,  and  sent  back  for  further 
consideration,  "that  the  freemen  might  ripen  their  thought," 
and  make  further  suggestion.  The  next  lot  of  returns  were 


86  EARLY  MASSACHUSETTS 

referred  to  two  clergymen,  John  Cotton  and  Nathaniel  Ward. 
On  this  basis,  in  1641,  each  of  these  gentlemen  presented  a 
full  code  to  the  General  Court,  and  the  more  democratic 
The  one,  by  Ward,  was  adopted.  This  famous  Body  of 

"  Body  of  Liberties  marks  splendid  progress  in  law,  English  or 
American.  Especially  notable  are  (1)  the  provision 
that  no  punishment  should  be  inflicted  merely  at  the  discre 
tion  of  magistrates  but  only  by  virtue  of  some  express  law  of 
the  colony ;  (2)  prohibition  of  monopolies  ;  (3)  right  of  jury 
trial  with  right  of  "challenge"  ;  and  (4)  the  curiously  interest 
ing  legislation  under  the  headings  "Liberties  of  Women"  and 
"Liberties  of  Children."  Much  in  advance  of  English  Com 
mon  Law  practice  was  the  order,  --  "Everie  marry ed 
woeman  shall  be  free  from  bodilie  correction  or  stripes  by 
her  husband,"  —  although  there  was  added  the  prudent 
afterthought,  "  unless  it  be  in  his  owne  defence  upon  her 
assalt." 

The  next  important  fruit  of  the  democratic  movement  was 
the  division  of  the  legislature  into  two  Houses.  For  ten  years 
Evolution  of  a^er  the  "revolution  of  1634,"  the  General  Court 
a  two-House  sat  as  one  body.  But  it  was  made  up  of  two  dis 
tinct  "orders."  The  deputies  were  chosen  each  by 
his  own  townsfolk,  and  held  office  for  only  a  few  days.  Often 
they  were  artisans  or  farmers,  and  as  a  whole  they  leaned  to 
democracy.  The  Assistants  continued  to  be  intensely 
aristocratic.  They  had  many  additional  meetings  for 
judicial  business  and  to  aid  the  governor.  They  had  to 
know  some  law,  and  they  served  without  pay.  Only 
"gentlemen"  were  qualified  for  the  office,  or  could  afford 
to  hold  it.  More  yet  to  the  point  —  the  hottest  democrat 
did  not  dream  of  selecting  these  "ruling  magistrates"  from 
any  but  the  highest  of  the  gentry  class. 

Naturally,  friction  between  the  two  orders  was  incessant. 
At  the  first  clash,  in  the  summer  Court  of  1634,  the  Assistants 
claimed  "a  negative  voice''  or  veto.  To  grant  this  was  to 
give  as  much  voting  power  to  the  aristocratic  minority  as 
to  the  democratic  majority.  But  the  ministers  were 


THE  FIRST  TWO-HOUSE  LEGISLATURE  87 

brought  forward  to  argue  for  the  plan,  and  finally  it  was 
agreed  to. 

During  this  controversy,  a  pamphlet  by  Israel  Stoughton, 
of  Dorchester,  attacked  the  claim  of  the  Assistants  —  with 
what    Wintnrop  calls  "many  weak  arguments." 
The   Assistants    called    Stoughton   before    them,  Aristocrats 
forced  him  to  recant,  ordered  his  book  burned,  de-  suPPress 
prived  him  of  his  office  (of  deputy),  and  forbade 
him  to  hold  any  office  for  three  years  !     The  great  Puritan 
leaders  had   no   more   place  for  free  speech  than  for  the 
right  of  petition.     Thanks  to  English  custom,  debate  in  the 
General  Court  was  free.     Stoughton  could  have  spoken  his 
arguments  there  with  impunity.     But  the  Assistants  denied 
the  right  of  a  citizen,  outside  the  legislature,  to  criticize  the 
government.     Winthrop   had    written   a  pamphlet,    "  with 
many  weak  arguments  "  certainly,  in  favor  of  the  "negative 
voice";  but  the  Assistants  saw  no  wrong  in  argument  on 
that  side. 

The  Assistants  had  now  won  much  the  greater  weight  in 
the  legislature.     They  were  a  small  disciplined  body.     They 
could  agree  upon  plans  before  the  Court  met,  and  could 
act  as  a  unit  in  the  meeting,  much  better  than  could  the 
deputies.     Moreover  the  Assistants  monopolized  debate  :   it 
was  impossible  for  individual  deputies  to  confront  men  of 
such    social    superiority    and    such    political    ability.     The 
deputies  saw  that  they  would  gain  dignity  and  influence  if 
they  sat  by  themselves;   and,  in  1644,  the  General  Court 
separated  into   two   "Houses"      Thereafter,   each   "order" 
had  its  own  officers  and  committees,  and  managed  its  own 
debates.     This    was    the    first    two-House    legislature    in 
America.     The   immediate   occasion   for   the   di-  Mrs  Sher_ 
vision   was   a  quaint   three-year   dispute   over   a  man's  pig 
poor  woman's  pig,   which  had  strayed  into  the  vkTcfryto 
pen  of  a  rich  gentleman  and  had  been  slaughtered,  the  demo- 
Says  Winthrop,  —  "  There  fell  out  a  great  matter  crats 
upon   a  small  occasion."      Three    lawsuits   regarding  this 
pig  had  come  up  to  the  General  Court.     Each  time  the 
deputies  had  sided  with  the  woman,  the  Assistants  with 


88  EARLY  MASSACHUSETTS 

the  "  gentleman."  The  irritation  on  both  sides  hastened 
the  separation  of  the  legislature  into  distinct  chambers. 
But  such  a  move  had  already  been  considered,  and  the  real 
cause  lay  in  the  class  jealousy  that  we  have  been  tracing. 
When  Assistants  and  deputies  could  no  longer  live  in  peace 
under  one  roof,  the  example  of  the  two-House  parliament  in 
England  suggested  a  convenient  remedy. 

IV.    LOCAL  GOVERNMENT  IN  NEW  ENGLAND 

Town    meetings  are   to    liberty   what   primary    schools  are  to  science. 

TOCQUEVILLE. 

Most  New  England  towns  in  the  seventeenth  century 
were  merely  agricultural  villages.  Farmers  did  not  live 
A  New  scattered  through  the  country,  as  now,  each  on 
England  his  own  farm.  They  dwelt  together,  European 

fashion,  in  villages  of  thirty  or  a  hundred  or  two 
hundred  householders,  with  their  fields  stretching  off  on  all 
sides. 

At  first,  in  Massachusetts,  the  General  Court  appointed 
justices  and  constables  for  each  settlement,  and  tried  to  attend 
And  the  ^o  °ther  local  business.  But  from  the  first,  too, 
General  on  special  occasions,  the  people  of  a  town  met  to 

discuss  matters  of  interest,  —  as  at  the  famous 
Watertown  meeting  of  1632.  Such  gatherings  were  called 
Evolution  by  a  minister  or  other  leading  man,  and  were 
of  town  sometimes  held  just  before  the  people  dispersed 

from  the  Thursday  "sermon"  (the  ancestor  of  our 
midweek  "prayer  meeting").  The  first  Boston  meeting 
that  we  know  of  was  held  at  such  a  time  —  to  choose  a  com 
mittee  to  divide  the  town  lands  (page  83  above). 

Then  in  1633  Dorchester  ordered  that  there  should  be  a 
regular  monthly  town  meeting  to  settle  town  matters.  Water- 
Dorchester  town  followed  this  example  the  next  spring ;  and 
and  soon  each  town,  old  or  new,  fell  into  line.  Each 

Watertown  town?  too,  chose  a  town  clerk  to  keep  records  of 
the  "by-laws"  passed  a»t  the  meetings,  and  elected  a  com 
mittee  ("the  seven  men,"  "the  nine  men,"  "the  selected 


TOWN  MEETING  AND  SELECTMEN  89 

townsmen,"   "the  Select  Men")   with  vague  authority  to 
manage  town  affairs  between  the  town  meetings. 

These  governments  by  town  meeting  and  Selectmen  grew 
up  out  of  the  needs  of  the  people,  and  out  of  their  desire  to 
manage  their  own  affairs.  Soon  the  General  Court  gave 
legal  sanction  to  the  system.  After  that,  in  theory,  the 
towns  possessed  only  such  authority  as  the  central  govern 
ment  of  the  commonwealth  delegated  to  them.  The  central 
legislature  gave  the  town  its  territory  and  its  name,  and  re 
quired  it  to  maintain  trainband,  school,  roads,  and  certain 
police  arrangements,  and  sometimes  imposed  fines  when  a 
town  failed  in  any  of  these  things  to  come  up  to  the  standard 
set  by  law. 

In  actual  practice,  however,  great  independence  was  left 
the  town.  The  town  meeting  appointed  all  local  officers,  — 
not  merely  selectmen  and  clerk,  but  school  trustees,  Local  self- 
hog  reeve,  fence  viewer,  constable,  treasurer,  pound  government 
keeper,  sealer  of  weights  and  measures,  measurer  of  corn  and 
lumber,  overseer  of  chimneys,  overseer  of  the  village  alms- 
house  ;  and  for  most  of  these  officers  it  alone  defined  all 
powers  and  duties.  It  divided  the  town  lands  among  the  in 
habitants,  —  such  a  part  as  it  chose  to  divide,  —  and  it  fixed 
the  size  of  building  lots,  —  a  quarter-acre,  an  acre,  two  acres, 
or  five.  It  passed  ordinances  regarding  the  remaining  town 
fields  and  pastures,  the  keeping  up  of  fences,  the  running 
of  cattle  and  hogs,  the  term  of  the  school  and  its  support, 
the  support  of  the  church,  and  of  the  town  poor. 

This  town  democracy  had  its  disadvantages.  Action 
was  slow,  and  was  often  hindered  by  ignorance  and  petty 
neighborhood  jealousies.  But  the  best'  thing  about  the 
town  meeting  was  the  constant  training  in  politics  it  gave 
to  the  mass  of  the  people.  Thomas  Jefferson  called  it 
"the  best  school  of  political  liberty  the  world  ever  saw." 

All  the  people  in  a  town  could  come  to  town  meeting  and 
could   speak   there ;    but   not   all   could  vote.     At  classes  Of 
the  base  of  society  in  every  town  was  a  class  of  the  town 
"cottagers,"  or  squatters,  who  were  permitted  to  popul 
live  in  the  place  "  at  the  town's  courtesy  only,"  and  who 


90  EARLY  MASSACHUSETTS 

could  not  acquire  land  there,  or  claim  any  legal  right  to  the 
use  of  the  town  "commons"  for  pasture.  Servants  whose 
term  of  service  was  up,  and  strangers  who  drifted  into  the 
town  as  day  laborers,  usually  passed  at  first  into  this  class. 
The  people  in  a  town  who  held  full  town  citizenship  were 
known  as  "inhabitants."  A  "cottager,"  however  worthy, 
or  a  new  settler  of  even  the  gentry  class,  could  be  "admitted 
inhabitant"  only  by  vote  of  the  town ;  but  in  practice,  the 
"inhabitants"  of  a  town  included  all  its  gentlemen  and 
industrious  artisans  and  freeholders,  —  many  of  whom 
never  secured  the  colonial  franchise.  Thus  the  town  gov 
ernment  in  Massachusetts  was  more  democratic  than  the 
central  government.  The  body  of  citizens  was  more  ex 
tensive,  and  the  citizens  acted  directly,  not  through  repre 
sentatives.  And  this  town  democracy  touched  the  life  of 
the  people  at  more  points,  and  at  more  vital  ones,  than  did 
the  central  government. 

V.   AN   ATTEMPT  AT  AN  ARISTOCRATIC   THEOCRACY 

In  England  the  High-churchmen  had  reproached  the 
Low-churchmen  with  secretly  being  Separatists.  The  Low- 
The  Massa-  church  Puritans  repelled  the  charge  indignantly, 
Puritans  anc^'  to  Prove  their  good  faith,  joined  vehemently 
and  the  in  denouncing  the  Separatists.  Thomas  Hooker 
Separatists  was  one  of  ^ne  greatest  of  the  Puritan  clergy. 
Before  he  came  to  America,  while  a  fugitive  in  Holland, 
he  was  called  a  Separatist.  But  he  claimed  to  have  "an 
extreme  aversion"  to  that  sect,  and  he  wrote,  "To  separate 
from  the  faithful  assemblies  and  churches  in  England,  as  no 
churches,  is  an  error  in  judgment  and  a  sin  in  practice." 
So,  too,  Francis  Higginson  (page  63)  exclaimed,  as  the 
shores  of  England  receded  from  view,  "We  will  not  say,  as  the 
Separatists  are  wont  to  say,  Farewell,  Rome  !  Farewell,  Baby 
lon  !  But  we  will  say,  Farewell,  dear  England  ;  Farewell,  the 
Church  of  God  in  England,  and  all  Christian  friends  there." 

But  even  Hooker's  vehement  protest  left  a  loophole  — 
not  uncharacteristic  of  much  Puritan   sophistry  —  in   his 


ATTEMPT  AT  ARISTOCRATIC  THEOCRACY  91 

cautious  injection  of  the  word  "  faithful."  And  when 
the  Massachusetts  Puritans  reached  the  New  World  they 
found  themselves  more  in  accord  with  the  despised  Sepa 
ratists  than  they  had  thought.  Much  of  the  change  seems 
to  have  come  on  the  Atlantic,  —  where  the  eight  or 
ten  weeks'  voyage,  and  the  daily  preaching,  invited  men 
to  find  out  just  where  they  did  stand.  At  all  events, 
very  soon  they  did  separate  wholly  from  the  English  Church, 
refusing  even  to  recognize  its  ordination  of  clergymen.  Union  of 
On  the  other  hand,  they  did  not  separate  the  church  state  and 
from  the  state,  as  Plymouth  did,  nor  did  they  make  ° 
one  congregation  wholly  independent  of  another  in  matters  of 
church  government.  They  wished  to  use  the  state  to  preserve 
their  religion  and  church  discipline.  Winthrop  declared  that 
their  purpose  in  coming  to  America  was  "to  seek  out  a  place 
of  cohabitation  under  a  due  form  of  government  both  civil 
and  ecclesiastical."  To  keep  this  union  of  state  and  church 
they  adopted  three  distinct  devices :  (1)  they  gave  the 
franchise  only  to  church  members ;  (2)  they  allowed  no 
churches  except  those  approved  by  the  government ;  (3)  they 
referred  many  political  questions  to  the  clergy  assembled  in 
synods. 

The  Massachusetts  ideal  was  an  aristocratic  theocracy,  —  a 
government  by  the  best,  in  accordance  with  the  law  of  God. 
The  ministers  were  supposed  to  have  special  ability  An  aris_ 
to  -interpret    that    law.     Nor    were    they    back-  tocratic 
ward   in   claiming   such  rights.     Winthrop   tells,  * 
with  approval,  how  Cotton  "proved"  from  many  texts  of 
Scripture  "that  the  rulers  of  the  people  should  consult  with 
ministers  of   the  churches  upon  occasion  of  any  weighty 
matter,  though  the  case  should  seem  never  so  clear,  —  as 
David  in  the  case  of  Ziklag."     In  practice,  the  The  clergy 
ministers  in  politics   proved  a  bulwark  of  class  inP°Htics 
rule.     In  every  controversy  between   aristocracy   and   de 
mocracy,   they  found  some  Biblical  passage  which  would 
support    the    aristocracy.     More    than    once    democratic 
progress  depended  upon  the  appearance  of  a  rare  democratic 
champion  among  the  ministers,  like  Ward  of  Ipswich  (page 


92  EARLY  MASSACHUSETTS 

86)  or  Hooker  of  Connecticut  (below).  By  1689  the  democ 
racy  had  learned  the  lesson,  and  managed  sometimes  to  put 
forward  democratic  ministers  to  preach  "election  sermons." 

The  purpose  of  the  early  Massachusetts  Puritans  (in 
their  own  words)  was  "to  build  a  City  of  God  on  earth." 
Relation  of  They  came  to  the  wilderness  not  so  much  to 
the  Puritan  escape  persecution  as  to  find  a  freer  chance  to 
religious  build  as  they  saw  fit,  where  there  should  be 
freedom  none  with  right  to  hinder  them ;  and  they  did 
not  mean  that  intruders  should  mar  their  work.  This 
plan  forbade  toleration.  Religious  freedom  was  no  part  of  the 
Puritan's  program.  He  never  claimed  that  it  was.  It  was 
fundamentally  inconsistent  with  his  program.  The  Puritan 
was  trying  a  lofty  experiment,  for  which  he  sacrificed  home 
and  ease ;  but  he  could  not  try  it  at  all  without  driving  out 
from  his  "City  of  the  Lord"  those  who  differed  from  him. 

In  the  first  fall  after  Winthrop's  arrival,  two  "gentlemen" 
from  England  came  to  Massachusetts  by  way  of  Plymouth. 
They  were  introduced  by  Miles  Standish ;  "but,"  says 
Winthrop,  "having  no  testimony  [i.e.  evidence  of  religious 
standing],  we  would  not  receive  them."  Probably  these 
men  were  Separatists;  and  the  government  was  cautious 
regarding  them,  because  they  were  "gentlemen,"  not  com 
mon  men  without  influence.  In  the  following  March,  the 
Assistants  shipped  back  to  England  six  men  at  one  time, 
without  trial,  merely  upon  the  ground  that  they  were  ".un- 
Deporta-  nieete  to  inhabit  here  ";  while  for  years  there  were 
tions  for  occasional  entries  in  the  records  like  the  following  : 
"Mr.  Thomas  Makepeace,  because  of  his  novile 
disposition,  is  informed  that  we  are  weary  of  him,  unless 
he  reform"  ;  and  "John  Smith  is  ordered  to  remove  himself 
from  this  jurisdiction  for  divers  dangerous  opinions  which  he 
holdeth."  These  first  "deportations  "  help  us  to  understand 
the  more  famous  expulsions  of  Roger  Williams  and  Anne 
Hutchinson. 

Roger  Williams  was  one  of  the  most  powerful  and  scholarly 
of  the  great  Puritan  clergy.  He  had  rare  sweetness  of 
temper ;  but,  along  with  it,  a  genius  for  getting  into  bitter 


AND  ROGER  WILLIAMS  93 

controversy.  He  was  broad-minded  on  great  questions ; 
but  he  could  quarrel  vehemently  over  fantastic  quibbles. 
The  kindly  Bradford  could  not  like  him  and  de-  Roger 
scribes  him  as  possessing ' '  many  precious  parts,  but  Williams 
very  unsettled  in  judgment";  and  again,-  "I  desire  the 
Lord  to  show  him  his  errors  and  reduce  him  into  the  way 
of  truth,  and  give  him  a  settled  judgment  and  constancy  in 
the  same ;  for  I  hope  he  belongs  to  the  Lord."  Eggleston 
hits  off  Williams'  weakness  well  in  saying  that  he  "could  put 
the  questions  of  grace  after  meat  and  of  religious  freedom 
into  the  same  category." 

Driven  from  England  by  Laud,  Williams  came  to  Massa 
chusetts  in  the  supply  ship  in  the  winter  of  1631.  He  was 
welcomed  warmly  by  Winthrop  as  "a  godly  minister"; 
but  it  was  soon  plain  that  he  had  adopted  the  opinions  of 
the  Separatists.  He  scolded  at  all  who  would  not  utterly 
renounce  fellowship  with  English  churches,  and  he  preached 
against  any  union  of  church  and  state,  holding  that  the 
magistrate  had  no  right  to  punish  for  Sabbath-breaking  or 
for  other  offenses  against  "the  first  table"  (the  first  four  of 
the  Commandments).  Thus  his  welcome  at  Boston  quickly 
wore  thin.  He  went  to  Plymouth  for  a  time,  but  soon  re 
turned  to  the  larger  colony  as  the  pastor  of  Salem  — •  which, 
more  than  any  other  Massachusetts  town,  inclined  to 
Separatism  because  of  its  early  association  with  Plymouth 
and  some  very  essential  aid  given  it  by  that  colony  in  the 
trying  winter  before  the  Winthrop  migration  arrived. 
Just  at  this  time  Salem  wanted  more  lands.  The  court  of 
Assistants  paid  no  public  attention  to  the  request,  but  let 
it  be  known  privately  that,  if  Salem  expected  the  grant,  it 
had  best  dismiss  Williams.  On  his  part,  Williams  referred 
to  the  other  churches  of  the  colony  as  "ulcered  and  gan 
grened,"  and  called  the  clergy  "false  hirelings." 

An  opportunity  soon  offered  to  get  rid  of  him.  All  land 
in  America,  he  urged,  belonged  to  the  Indians  until  bought 
from  them.  He  denied  the  title  of  the  colony,  and  said 
that  the  King  had  told  "a  solemn  lie"  in  the  charter  in 
claiming  right  to  give  title.  Such  words,  unrebuked,  might 


94  EARLY  MASSACHUSETTS 

enbroil  the  little  colony  with  the  home  government,  with 
which  it  was  already  in  trouble  enough  (page  73).  The 
magistrates  seized  the  excuse,  and  ordered  Williams  back  to 
England  —  where  the  loss  of  his  ears  was  the  least  he  could 
expect.  If  he  had  been  orthodox  in  religion,  the  Massachu 
setts  government  would  surely  have  found  some  nominal 
punishment  for  his  overzeal  against  the  Crown  —  as  they 
did  for  Endicott,  who  just  at  this  time  cut  the  cross  out  of 
the  English  flag,  calling  it  "an  idolatrous  symbol." 

On  account  of  the  bitter  winter  season,  the  order  against 
Williams  was  suspended  until  spring.  The  magistrates 
seem  to  have  understood  that  he  agreed  meantime  not  to 
teach  these  troublesome  doctrines.  He  continued  to  do  so, 
however ;  and  an  officer  was  sent  to  place  him  on  board 
ship.  Forewarned  secretly  by  Winthrop,  he  escaped  to  the 
forest,  and  found  his  way  to  the  Narragansett  Indians.  The 
next  spring  a  few  adherents  joined  him ;  and  the  little  band 
founded  Providence,  the  beginning  of  Rhode  Island  (1636). 

Williams  had  few  followers,  and  was  easily  disposed  of. 
The  Hutchinson  episode  divided  the  colony  for  a  time  into 
Anne  not  unequal  parts  ;  and  the  majority,  to  maintain 

Hutchinson  their  tottering  supremacy,  resorted  to  dubious 
political  devices.  Anne  Hutchinson  is  described  by  Win- 
throp  (who  hated  her)  as  a  woman  of  "ready  wit  and  bold 
spirit."  She  was  intellectual,  eloquent,  and  enthusiastic. 
Her  real  offense  seems  to  have  been  her  keen  contempt  for 
many  of  the  ministers  and  her  disrespect  toward  the  magis 
trates  ;  but  she  also  held  religious  views  somewhat  different 
from  the  prevailing  ones.  At  one  time,  however,  Winthrop 
confessed,  "Except  men  of  good  understanding,  few  could 
see  where  the  differences  were ;  and  indeed  they  seemed  so 
small  as  (if  men's  affections  had  not  been  formerly  alienated 
.  .  .)  they  might  easily  have  come  to  a  reconcilliation." 
Mrs.  Hutchinson  spoke  much  of  an  "inner  light"  ;  and  this 
phrase  was  twisted  into  a  claim  that  she  enjoyed  special 
revelations  from  the  Holy  Spirit.  For  a  time  Boston  sup 
ported  her  with  great  unanimity,  but  the  majority  in  all  the 
other  churches  was  rallied  against  her. 


AND  ANNE  HUTCHINSON  95 

Among  Mrs.  Hutchinson's  adherents  were  the  minister 
Wheelwright,  and  young  Harry  Vane,  governor  at  the 
time.  In  the  winter  of  1637,  Wheelwright  preached  a  ser 
mon  declaiming  violently  against  the  ministers  of  the  op 
posing  faction.  For  this  the  next  General  Court  (in  March) 
"questioned"  him,  and  voted  him  "guilty  of  sedition,"  in 
spite  of  a  lengthy  petition  from  Boston  for  freedom  of 
speech. 

The  majority  adopted  also  a  shrewd  maneuver.  To 
lessen  the  influence  of  heretical  Boston,  they  voted  to  hold 
the  approaching  "Court  of  Elections"  not  at  that  town  as 
usual,  but  at  Newtown  (Cambridge).  When  that  Court 
assembled,  in  May,  "there  was  great  danger  of  tumult." 
"Those  of  that  side,"  says  Winthrop,  "grew  into  fierce 
speeches,  and  some  laid  hands  on  others ;  but  seeing  them 
selves  too  weak,  they  grew  quiet."  The  orthodox  faction 
finally  elected  Winthrop  over  Vane,  and  even  dropped  three 
magistrates  of  the  other  party  off  the  Board  of  Assistants. 
To  prevent  the  minority  from  receiving  expected  reinforce 
ments  from  England,  it  was  then  decreed  that  newcomers 
should  not  settle  in  the  colony,  or  even  tarry  there  more 
than  three  weeks,  without  permission  from  the  government. 
A  few  weeks  later,  a  brother  of  Mrs.  Hutchinson  arrived, 
with  many  friends ;  but  Winthrop  compelled  them  to  pass 
on  at  once  to  the  New  Hampshire  wilderness. 

In  the  following  summer  a  synod  of  clergy  solemnly  con 
demned  the  Hutchinson  heresies  ;  and  at  the  General  Court 
in  November  the  majority,  "finding  that  two  so  opposite 
parties  could  not  contain  in  the  same  body  without  hazard 
of  ruin  to  the  whole,"  determined  to  crush  their  opponents. 
Mrs.  Hutchinson  and  Wheelwright  were  banished  after  a 
farcical  trial;  and  "a  fair  opportunity"  for  destroying 
their  party  was  discovered  in  the  petition,  nine  months  old, 
regarding  Wheelwright.  The  three  Boston  deputies,  be 
cause  they  had  "agreed  to  the  petition,"  were  expelled  from 
the  Court  and  banished  from  the  colony.  Six  other  leading 
citizens  were  disfranchised.  The  remaining  signers,  seventy- 
six  in  number,  were  disarmed.  Fifty-eight  of  them  lived 


96  EARLY  MASSACHUSETTS 

in  Boston;  the  rest,  scattered  in  five  other  towns.  The 
Court  pretended  to  justify  this  insult  by  referring  to  the 
excesses  of  the  Munster  Anabaptists  of.  a  century  earlier : 
"Insomuch  as  there  is  just  cause  for  suspition  that  they, 
as  others  in  Germany  in  former  times,  may,  upon  some  reve 
lation,  make  a  suddaine  irruption  upon  those  that  differ 
with  them,"  runs  the  preamble  of  the  disarming  order, 
with  a  sly  dig  at  Mrs.  Hutchinson's  "revelations." 

And  now  Boston  church  was  brought  back  into  the  fold. 
Taking  advantage  of  the  temporary  absence  of  twelve  more 
of  the  leaders  of  the  congregation,  Cotton  and  Winthrop 
succeeded  in  browbeating  the  cowed  and  leaderless  society 
into  excommunicating  Mrs.  Hutchinson.  Says  Winthrop, 
after  telling  the  story  :  "At  this  time,  the  good  providence  of 
God  so  disposing,  divers  of  the  congregation  (being  the  chief 
men  of  that  party,  her  husband  being  one)  were  gone  to 
Narragansett  to  seek  out  a  new  place  for  plantation." 
This  assumption  of  divine  help  in  a  political  trick  is  the  most 
unlovely  sentence  Winthrop  ever  penned. 

In  all  this  persecution  the  Massachusetts  Puritans  were 
not  behind  their  age :  they  merely  were  not  in  advance  in 
The  age  and  tn^s  respect.  In  England  the  Puritan  Long  Parlia- 
reiigious  ment  in  1641,  demanding  reform  in  the  church, 
protested  that  it  did  not  favor  toleration:  "We 
do  declare  it  is  far  from  our  purpose  to  let  loose  the  golden 
reins  of  discipline  and  government  in  the  church,  to  leave 
private  persons  or  particular  congregations  to  take  up  what 
form  of  divine  service  they  please.  For  we  hold  it  requisite 
that  there  should  be  throughout  the.  whole  realm  a  con 
formity  to  that  order  which  the  laws  enjoin." 

On  the  other  hand,  a  few  far-seeing  men  did  reach  to 
loftier  vision.  In  that  same  year,  Lord  Brooke  wrote  nobly 
in  a  treatise  on  religion:  "The  individual  should  have 
liberty.  No  power  on  earth  should  force  his  practice.  One 
that  doubts  with  reason  and  humility  may  not,  for  aught  I 
see,  be  forced  by  violence.  .  .  .  Fire  and  water  may  be 
restrained ;  but  light  cannot.  It  will  in  at  every  cranny. 


AND  RELIGIOUS  PERSECUTION  97 

Now  to  stint  it  is  [to-morrow]  to  resist  an  enlightened  and 
inflamed  multitude.  .  .  .  Can  we  not  dissent  in  judgment, 
but  we  must  also  disagree  in  affection?"  In  America 
Roger  Williams  caught  this  truth  clearly,  and  made  it  the 
foundation  principle  of  Rhode  Island.  So,  too,  Sir  Richard 
Saltonstal,  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  1630  migration.  Sal- 
tonstaPs  company  settled  Watertown,  which  from  the  first 
was  inclined  not  only  to  democracy  in  politics  but  to  "sep 
aratism"  in  religion.  (Indeed  it  seems  probable  that  re 
sentment  by  the  town  at  certain  interference  by  the  magis 
trates  with  their  pastor  was  back  of  the  famous  Watertown 
Protest  regarding  taxation  ;  page  77.)  Saltonstal  remained 
in  the  colony  less  than  two  years.  Nearly  twenty  years 
later  (1650)  he  wrote  from  England  to  leading  Massachu 
setts  clergy  a  touching  protest  against  religious  persecution. 

"Reverened  and  deare  friends,  whom  I  unfaynedly  love  and  re 
spect  :  It  doth  not  a  little  grieve  my  spirit  to  heare  what  sadd 
things  are  reported  dayly  of  your  tyranny  and  persecutions  in 
New  England  —  as  that  you  fyne,  whip,  and  imprison  men  for 
their  consciences.  .  .  .  Truely,  friends,  this  your  practice  of 
compelling  any  in  matters  of  worship  to  do  that  whereof  they 
are  not  fully  persuaded,  is  to  make  them  sin  ...  and  many  are 
made  hypocrites  thereby.  .  .  .  We  .  .  .  wish  you  prosperity 
every  way  [and  pray]  that  the  Lord  would  give  you  meeke  and 
humble  spirits,  not  to  stryve  soe  much  for  uniformity  as  to  keepe 
the  unity  of  the  spirit  in  the  bond  of  peace.  ...  I  hope  you 
do  not  assume  to  yourselves  infallibilitie  of  judgment,  when  the 
most  learned  of  the  Apostles  confesseth  he  knew  but  in  parte.  .  .  -5'1 

1  This  extract  does  very  imperfect  justice  to  the  fine  and  tender  charity  of 
Saltonstal's  long  letter.  With  the  answer  (a  masterpiece  of  Puritan  sophistry) 
the  document  is  printed  in  Hutchinson's  Collection  of  Original  Papers,  whence  both 
letters  are  reproduced  in  West's  Source  Book  in  American  History. 

The  Lord  Brooke  quoted  above  planned  at  one  time,  with  his  friend,  Lord 
Say,  to  settle  in  Massachusetts.  In  the  interesting  negotiations  (Source  Book), 
the  Reverend  John  Cotton  explains  to  the  Lords  that  in  Massachusetts  the 
General  Court  must  soon  divide  into  two  Houses,  representing  the  two  "Orders" 
of  "  gentlemen  "  and  "freeholders."  (This  was  in  1636  !  cf.  pages  87-88.)  At  a 
later  time  these  same  two  noblemen  tried  to  establish  a  colony  in  the  Connecti 
cut  valley,  where  Saybrooke  was  named  for  them. 


CHAPTER  V 

OTHER  NEW  ENGLAND   COLONIES 

BY  1640  there  were  five  colonies  in  New  England,  besides 
Plymouth  and  Massachusetts.  English  proprietors  had 
founded  fishing  stations  on  the  coasts  of  Maine  and  New 
Hampshire,  and  these  settlements  had  been  reinforced  and 
Puritanized  by  Hutchinson  sympathizers  from  Massachu 
setts.  The  New  Haven  group  of  towns  began  with  a  Puritan 
migration  from  England  in  1638.  This  colony  closely  re 
sembled  Massachusetts ;  but  it  had  a  little  less  aristocracy, 
and  depended  a  little  more  on  the  Old  Testament  as  a  guide 
in  government. 

The  two  remaining  colonies,  Rhode  Island  and  Connecticut, 
represented  new  ideas  and  played  new  parts  in  history. 
Each  was  born  of  rebellion  against  one  part  of  the  Massachu 
setts  ideal :  Rhode  Island,  against  theocracy  ;  Connecticut, 
against  aristocracy.  In  the  long  run  the  great  Massachu 
setts  plan  of  aristocratic  theocracy  broke  down ;  while  these 
two  little  protesting  colonies  laid  broad  and  deep  the  foun 
dations  of  America.  Roger  Williams  in  Rhode  Island  was 
the  apostle  of  modern  religious  liberty ;  and  Thomas  Hooker 
in  Connecticut  was  the  apostle  of  modern  democracy. 

RHODE   ISLAND 

Williams  founded  the  town  of  Providence  in  the  spring 
of  1636  (page  94).  From  the  Indians  he  bought  a  tract  of 
Emphasis  land,  and  deeded  it  in  joint  ownership  to  twelve 
on  freedom  companions  "and  to  such  others  as  the  major 
part  of  us  shall  admit  into  the  same  fellowship." 
Later  comers  signed  an  agreement  to  submit  themselves 
"only  in  civil  things"  to  orders  made  for  the  public  good 

98 


RHODE  ISLAND 


by  the  town  fellowship,  —  in  which  they  were  freely  granted 
an  equal  voice.  "Civil"  in  this  passage  is  used  in  its 
common  English  sense  in  that  day,  as  opposed  to  "eccle 
siastical."  The  point  to  the  agreement  is  that  the  people 
did  not  purpose  to  let  the  government  meddle  with  religion. 


NEW   ENGLAND 
IN    164O 


100  RHODE  ISLAND 

Williams'  opinion  upon  the  possibility  of  maintaining  civil 
order  without  compelling  uniformity  in  religion  is  set  forth 
admirably  in  his  figure  of  speech,  comparing  a  state  to  a  ship, 
where  all,  passengers  and  seamen,  must  obey  the  captain  in 
matters  of  navigation,  though  all  need  not  attend  the  ship's 
prayers. 

No  opportunity  was  lost  to  assert  this  doctrine.  In  1644 
Williams  secured  from  the  Long  Parliament  a  "Patent" 
authorizing  the  Rhode  Island  settlements  to  rule  them 
selves  "by  such  a  form  of  civill  government,"  and  to  make 
"such  civill  laws  and  consitutions "  as  the  majority  might 
prefer.  Then,  in  1663,  when  the  colony  received  its  first 
royal  charter,  the  fundamental  idea  was  made  yet  more 
explicit :  — 

"Whereas  it  is  much  on  their  hearts."  says  a  preamble,  quoting 
the  petition  of  the  colonists,  "to  hold  forth  a  livelie  experiment 
that  a  most  flourishing  civill  state  may  stand  .  .  .  with  a  full 
libertie  in  religious  concernments,"  accordingly,  "noe  person 
within  the  sayd  colonye,  at  any  tyme  hereafter,  shall  bee  any  wise 
molested,  punished,  disquieted,  or  called  in  question,  for  any 
differences  in  opinione  in  matters  of  religion,  and  [i.e.  provided 
he]  doe  not  actually  disturb  the  civill  peace." 

The  practice  of  the  colony,  too,  kept  to  this  high  level. 
During  the  Commonwealth  in  England,  Massachusetts 
Rhode  complained  that  Rhode  Island  sheltered  Quak- 

isiand  and  ers,  who  then  swarmed  across  her  borders  to 
5  annoy  her  neighbors.  Williams  disliked  Quakers 
heartily  ;  but  he  now  replied  that  they  ought  to  be  punished 
only  when  they  had  actually  disturbed  the  peace,  and  not 
merely  for  being  Quakers.  "We  have  no  law,"  ran  this 
noble  argument,  "to  punish  any  for  declaring  by  words  their 
minds  concerning  the  ways  and  things  of  God."  Massachu 
setts  threatened  interference.  The  smaller  colony  appealed 
to  England,  praying  —  "Whatever  fortune  may  befall  us,  let 
us  not  be  compelled  to  exercise  power  over  men's  con 
sciences."  In  Rhode  Island,  religious  freedom  was  not  a 
mere  means  to  timorous  toleration.  The  chief'  purpose  of 


CONNECTICUT  101 

this  social  "experiment"  was  to  prove  that  such.  :  freedom 
was  compatible  with  orderly  government  and  good  morals. 
For  a  time  there  was  much  turbulence  in  the  colony.  Prov 
idence  became  a  "crank's  paradise,"  "New  England's 
dumping  ground  for  the  disorderly  and  eccentric  elements  of 
her  population."  But  with  clear-eyed  faith  Williams  and 
his  friends  persisted,  and  finally  worked  out  successfully 
their  "livelie  experiment." 

CONNECTICUT 

The  birthplace  of  American  democracy  is  Hartford. — JOHNSTON. 

Three   Massachusetts   towns  had  been  foremost  in  the 
struggle  against  aristocracy,  --  Watertown,  Dorchester,  and 
Newtown.     In    1635-1636,    the    people    of   these  Withdrawal 
towns  made  a  new  migration  to  the  Connecticut  Of  demo- 
valley,  to  try  their  own  experiment  of  a  demo-  "atic 
cratic  state.     Other  motives  had  part  in  the  move-  chusetts 
ment,  —  among  them,  a  desire  for  the  more  fertile  t°wns  to. 

,       .     .i  I,  rr»i         •  ,1  i      .1        Connecticut 

land   of    the    valley.      Ihe   journey   through   the 
forests,   with  women   and  children,   herds,    and   household 
goods,  was  the  first  of  the  overland  pilgrimages  which  were 
to  become  so  characteristic  of  American  life. 

The  inspirer  of  this  movement  was  Thomas  Hooker,  pastor 
of  Newtown.     Hooker  became  to  Connecticut  even  more 
than  Cotton  to  Massachusetts.     These  two  great  Thomas 
leaders  were  widely  different  in  their  lives  and  feel-  Hooker 
ings.     Cotton  belonged  to  the  aristocratic  English  gentry. 
Hooker's  father  was  a   yeoman.     He  himself  had  been   a 
menial  "sizar"  at  Cambridge  University,  and  his  wife  had 
been  a  ladies'  maid.     By  birth  and  association,  as  well  as 
by  conviction,  he  was  a  man  of  the  people. 

Over  against  the  aristocratic  doctrines  of  the  great  Massa 
chusetts  leaders,  Hooker  stated  admirably  the  case  for 
democracy.  Winthrop  wrote  to  him  that  democracy  was 
"unwarrantable"  because  "the  best  part  is  always  the 
least,  and  of  that  best  part  the  wiser  part  is  always  the 
lesser";  but  Hooker  replied:  "In  matters  .  .  .  that  con- 


102  CONNECTICUT 

cern  the  common  good,  a  general  council  chosen  by  all,  to 
transact  business  which  concerns  all,  I  conceive  .  .  .  most 
suitable  to  rule  and  most  safe  for  the  relief  of  the  whole." 
Winthrop  and  Cotton  taught  that  the  magistrates'  authority 
had  divine  sanction.  Hooker  preached  a  great  political 
sermon  to  teach  that  (1)  "the  foundation  of  authority  is 
laid  in  the  consent  of  the  governed" ;  (2)  "the  choice  of  mag 
istrates  belongs  to  the  people";  and  (3)  "those  who  have 
power  to  appoint  officers,  have  also  the  right  to  set  bounds 
to  their  authority." 

For  a  time  the  three  Connecticut  towns  kept  their  Massa 
chusetts  names.  Later,  they  were  known  as  Hartford, 
Wethersfield,  and  Windsor.  At  first  they  recognized  a 
vague  authority  in  commissioners  appointed  over  them  by 
Massachusetts ;  but  each  town  managed  freely  its  own 
local  affairs,  and,  in  1639,  an  independent  central  govern 
ment  was  provided  by  a  mass  meeting  of  the 
mental  inhabitants  of  the  colony.  This  gathering  adopted 

?6rf9ers'  a  set  of  eleven  "Fundamental  Orders"  "the 
first  written  constitution"  in  the  modern  sense. 
The  document  set  up  a  plan  of  government  similar  to  that 
which  had  been  worked  out  in  Massachusetts,  emphasizing, 
however,  all  democratic  features  found  there  and  adding  a 
few  of  its  own. 

The  governor  held  office  for  one  year  only,  and  he  could 
not  serve  two  terms  in  succession.  He  had  no  veto,  and  in  two 
other  respects  he  lacked  authority  usually  possessed  by  an 
English  executive :  (1)  the  General  Court  could  not  be  dis 
solved  except  by  its  own  vote;  and  (2)  it  could  be  elected  and 
brought  together,  on  occasion,  without  the  governor's  summons. 
The  right  of  the  General  Court  is  expressly  asserted  to  "call 
into  question"  magistrate  or  governor,  and  even  (in  modern 
phrase)  to  "recall"  them  during  their  short  term  of  office. 
The  franchise  was  never  restricted  to  church  members, 
as  in  Massachusetts.  At  first,  anyone  whom  a  town  al 
lowed  to  vote  in  town  meeting  could  vote  also  in  the  General 
Court  of  Elections.  That  is,  the  towns  fixed  not  only  the 
local,  but  also  the  general  franchise.  But  in  1659  the  General 


BIRTHPLACE  OF  AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY 


103 


Court  ordered  that  thereafter  no  one  should  vote  for  gover 
nor  or  for  members  of  the  General  Court  unless  he  were 
possessed  of  thirty  pounds'  worth  of  property,  real  or  per 
sonal.  Even  in  democratic  Connecticut  this  property 
qualification  stood,  with  slight  change,  until  long  after  the 
American  Revolution. 


AN  OLD  GRIST  MILL  AT  NEW  LONDON,  CONNECTICUT,  built  in  1645.     Cf.  page  72. 

Connecticut  did  not  reject  theocracy.     Hooker  believed  in 
a  Bible  commonwealth  as  zealously  as  Cotton  did,  though 
he  understood   his  Bible  differently  on  political  Connecticut 
matters.     The  governor  had  to  be  a  member  of  and 
a  church ;    the  preamble  of  the  Orders  states  the  * 
first  purpose  of  the  government  to  be  the  maintaining  of  "the 
discipline  of  the  churches,  which  according  to  the  truth  of  the 
gospell  is  now  practiced  amongst  us" ;  and  the  first  code  of 
laws,  in  1650,  authorizes  the  government  "to  see  [that]  the 
force,  ordinances,  and  rules  of  Chris te  bee  observed  in  every 


104      THE  NEW  ENGLAND  CONFEDERATION 

Church  according  to  his  word."  The  General  Court  placed 
ministers,  defined  their  powers,  and  even  decided  who  should 
be  admitted  to  the  sacraments. 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND  CONFEDERATION 

The  New  England  colonies  had  hardly  established  them 
selves  in  the  wilderness  before  they  began  a  movement  toward 
The  need  federal  union.  The  Connecticut  valley  was  claimed 
of  union  by  t]le  Dutch  New  Netherlands.  Moreover,  the 
English  settlers  in  the  valley  found  themselves  at  once  in 
volved  in  war  with  the  Pequod  Indians.  Connecticut  felt 
keenly  the  need  of  protection  by  the  other  English  colonies ; 
and,  in  1637,  Hooker  (present  at  Boston  for  the  synod  that 
condemned  Mrs.  Hutchinson)  proposed  to  Massachusetts  a 
federal  compact.  For  the  moment  the  negotiations  fell 
through  because  of  States-rights  jealousy.  Much  as  Con 
necticut  feared  Dutchman  and  Indian,  she  feared  interference 
in  her  own  affairs  hardly  less,  and  hesitated  to  intrust  any 
Organiza-  real  authority  to  a  central  government.  But,  in 
tionini643  ifijjg,  commissioners  from  Massachusetts,  Con 
necticut,  New  Haven,  and  Plymouth  met  at  Boston,  and 
organized  the  Neiv  England  Confederation. 

Rhode  Island  and  the  New  Hampshire  towns  asked  in 
vain  for  admission  to  this  union.  The  leaders  of  Massachu 
setts  were  wont  to  refer  to  Rhode  Island  as  "that  sewer"; 
and  regarding  the  exclusion  of  New  Hampshire,  Winthrop 
wrote:  "They  ran  a  different  course  from  us,  both  in  their 
ministry  and  civil  administration  .  .  .  for  they  .  .  .  had 
made  a  tailor  their  mayor  and  had  entertained  one  Hull,  an 
excommunicated  person,  and  very  contentious,  to  be  their 
minister." 

The  date  (1643)  suggests  an  important  relation  between 
English  and  American  history.  The  union  of  the  colonies 
without  sanction  from  England  was  really  a  defiance  of 
authority.  But  war  had  just  broken  out  in  England  be 
tween  King  Charles  and  the  Puritans.  Accordingly,  the 
colonies  could  excuse  themselves  (as  they  did)  on  the  ground 


AND  ITS  CONSTITUTION  105 

of  necessity,  since  the  home  government  was  temporarily 
unable  to  protect  them;  while  really  they  were  influenced 
still  more  by  the  fact  that  it  could  not  interfere.  The  pre 
amble  to  the  Articles  states  all  other  motives  for  the  union 
admirably,  but,  naturally,  it  omits  this  last  consideration. 
The  Articles  of  Confederation  established  "a  firm  and  per 
petual  league."  For  matters  of  common  concern,  a  congress 
of  eight  commissioners,  two  from  each  of  the  four 

,       .  j  11  TU  .        The  Articles 

colonies,  was  elected  annually.  Ihese  commis 
sioners  had  "full  power  from  their  severall  Generall  Courtes 
respectively"  to  determine  upon  war  or  peace,  divide  spoils, 
admit  new  confederates,  and  to  manage  "all  things  of  like 
nature,  which  are  the  proper  concomitants  or  consequents  of 
such  a  Confederation  for  amity,  offence,  and  defence,  not  in 
termeddling  with  the  Government  of  any  of  the  Jurisdictions, 
which  .  .  .  is  reserved  entirely  to  themselves."  The  vote  of 
six  commissioners  was  to  be  final  in  all  matters ;  but  if  in 
any  case  six  could  not  agree,  then  the  matter  was  to  be 
referred  to  the  several  colonial  "Courts"  for  negotiation 
between  them.  Special  provision  was  made  for  the  sur 
render  of  fugitive  criminals  or  "servants"  escaping  from 
one  colony  to  another  and  for  arbitration  of  differences  that 
might  arise  between  any  two  colonies  of  the  union. 

This  document  compares  well  with  the  constitution  of  any 
earlier  confederation  in  history.  Its  weak  points  were  com 
mon  to  all  previous  unions.  The  greatest  difficulty  And  their 
arose  from  the  fact  that  one  of  the  confederates  was  working 
much  larger  than  the  others.  Each  of  the  three  smaller 
colonies  had  about  three  thousand  people :  Massachusetts 
alone  had  fifteen  thousand.  Consequently  she  bore  two 
thirds  of  all  burdens,  while  she  had  only  a  fourth  share  in  the 
government.  The  Bay  Colony  made  an  earnest  demand  for 
three  commissioners,  but  the  smaller  states  unanimously 
resisted  the  claim. 

Under  these  conditions,  Massachusetts  became  dissatis 
fied.  In  1653  six  of  the  federal  commissioners  voted  a 
levy  of  500  men  for  war  upon  New  Netherlands.  Massa 
chusetts  felt  least  interested  in  the  war,  and  her  General 


106      THE  NEW  ENGLAND  CONFEDERATION 

Court  refused  to  furnish  her  quota  of  300  men.  In  the 
language  of  later  times,  she  nullified  the  act  of  the  federal 
congress.  After  this,  the  commissioners  were  plainly  only 
an  advisory  body.  In  1662-1664,  the  absorption  of  New 
Haven  by  Connecticut  weakened  the  Confederation  still 
further;  and  it  finally  disappeared  when  Massachusetts 
lost  her  charter  in  1684. 


ENGLISH  AMERICA 
16GO-1690 


English  settlement,  tG6o 
Dutch  settlement.  *660 
Swedish  settlement,  t660 

Limit  of  English  occupatio 
in  <690  I 


PAET  II  — COLONIAL  AMEEIOA 
CHAPTER  VI 

THE  STRUGGLE  TO   SAVE   SELF-GOVERNMENT   (1660-1690) 
I.    A   GENERAL  VIEW 

THE  years  1660-1690  are  a  distinct  period  in  colonial 
development.  The  first  mark  of  the  period  is  a  vast  expan 
sion  of  territory.  In  1660  the  English  held  two  Territorial 
patches  of  coast,  one,  about  the  Chesapeake,  the  srowth 
other,  east  of  the  Hudson.  The  two  districts  were  sepa 
rated  by  hundreds  of  miles  of  wilderness  and  by  Dutch  and 
Swedish  possessions,  and  for  more  than  twenty  years  no 
new  English  colony  had  been  founded.  Thirty  years  later 
the  English  colonies  formed  an  unbroken  band  from  the 
Penobscot  to  the  Savannah.  To  the  south  of  Virginia  the 
Carolinas  had  been  added  (1663) ;  to  the  north  of  Maryland 
appeared  the  splendid  colony  of  Pennsylvania  (1681) ;  while 
the  rest  of  the  old  intermediate  region  had  become  English 
by  conquest  (New  York,  New  Jersey,  and  Delaware).  All 
the  colonies,  too,  had  broadened  their  area  of  settlement 
toward  the  interior.  Population  rose  from  60,000  in  1660  to 
250,000  in  1690. 

The  transformation,  from  isolated  patches  of  settlement 
into  a  continuous  colonial  empire,  brought  home  to  English 
rulers    the    need    of    a    uniform    colonial    policy.  And  a 
Charles  I  had  had  a  "Colonial  Council,"  but  it  colonial 
exercised  little  real  control.     In  1655,  when  Crom-  pohcy 
well  took  Jamaica  from  Spain,  one  of  his  officials  drew  up 
certain  "Overtures  touching  a  Councill  to  bee  erected  for 
foraigne  Plantations."     This  paper  suggested  various  meas 
ures  to  make  the  colonies  "understand  .   .  .  that  their  Head 

107 


108  "  COLONIAL  AMERICA,"   1660-1690 

and  Centre  is  Heere,"  and  after  the  Restoration,  Charles 
II  incorporated  much  of  the  document  in  his  " Instructions" 
to  a  "Council  for  Foreign  Plantations"  (later  succeeded  by 
the  "Lords  of  Trade"  and  in  1696  by  the  "Board  of  Trade 
and  Plantations"). 

This  Council  contained  many  of  the  noblest  men  of  the 
time.  It  was  instructed  to  study  the  state  of  the  planta- 
The  Coun-  tions  and  the  colonial  policies  of  other  countries ; 
cii  for  the  to  secure  copies  of  the  colonial  charters  and  laws ; 
Plantations  anj  ^  nave  a  general  oversight  of  all  colonial 

matters.  In  particular  it  was  to  endeavor  "that  the 
severall  collonies  bee  drawn  .  .  .  into  a  more  certaine,  civill, 
and  uniform  waie  of  Government  and  distribution  of  pub- 
lick  Justice,  in  which  they  are  at  present  scandalously  de 
fective.7'  During  the  period  that  we  are  now  considering, 
the  Council  was  hard-working,  honest,  and  well-meaning ; 
but  it  was  ignorant  of  affairs  in  the  colonies  and  out  of 
touch  with  the  people  that  it  was  trying  to  rule.  It  strove 
to  get  three  results  :  uniformity  and  economy  in  colonial  ad 
ministration  ;  better  military  defense ;  and  new  commercial 
regulations. 

European  countries  valued  colonies  as  a  source  of  goods 
not  produced  at  home,  and  as  a  sure  market  for  home  manu- 
The  com-  factures.  So  each  colonizing  country  adopted 
merciai  "navigation  acts"  to  restrict  the  trade  of  its  col- 
European  onies  exclusively  to  itself.  Without  this  prospect, 
countries  \^  would  not  have  seemed  worth  while  to  found 
colonies  at  all.  By  modern  standards,  all  these  commercial 
systems  were  absurd  and  tyrannical ;  but  the  English  system 
was  more  enlightened,  and  far  less  selfish  and  harsh,  than 
that  of  Holland  or  France  or  Spain. 

At  the  other  end  of  the  scale  was  Spain.1  For  two  hundred 
years  all  commerce  from  Spanish  America  could  pass  to  the 
Spain  and  outer  world  only  through  Spain,  and  through  only 
her  colonies  one  Spanish  port.  —  first  Seville,  and  afterward 
Cadiz.  Worse  still,  until  1748,  goods  could  be  imported  from 

1  This  paragraph  is  condensed  from  the  admirable  account  in  Bernard  Moses1 
Establishment  of  Spanish  Rule  in  America,  20-20  and  285-292. 


THE  ENGLISH  NAVIGATION  ACTS  109 

Europe  through  only  the  one  favored  port  in  Spain,  and  (for 
all  the  wide-lying  New  Spain  in  North  and  South  America) 
to  only  two  American  ports,  and  at  special  times.  Two  fleets 
sailed  each  year  from  Spain,  —  one  to  Porto  Bello  on  the 
Isthmus,  for  all  the  South  American  trade;  the  other  to 
Vera  Cruz  in  Mexico.  All  other  trade,  even  between  the 
separate  Spanish  colonies,  was  prohibited  under  penalty  of 
death.  From  the  most  distant  districts,  —  Chile  or  Argen 
tina,  —  goods  for  export  had  to  be  carried  to  Porto  Bello 
to  meet  the  annual  fleet.  There  was  held  a  forty  days'  fair, 
to  exchange  the  European  imports  for  precious  metals, 
tropical  woods,  and  hides.  By  this  arrangement,  in  many 
parts  of  South  America,  the  prices  of  European  goods  were 
increased  to  five  or  six  times  the  natural  amount,  while  the 
products  with  which  the  colonies  paid  were  robbed  of  value 
by  the  cost  of  transportation.  The  cattle  raised  on  the  vast 
plains  of  the  Argentine  could  reach  a  lawful  market  only  by 
being  carried  across  the  continent  to  Peru,  thence  by  sea  to 
Panama,  again  across  the  Isthmus  to  Porto  Bello,  and  (one 
chance  a  year)  from  that  port  to  Seville.  In  the  early  years 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  at  Buenos  Aires,  an  ox  was  worth 
a  dollar,  and  a  sheep  three  or  four  cents,  —  and  values  had 
risen  to  this  point  only  because  some  contraband  trade  had 
sprung  up,  in  spite  of  the  terrible  penalties.  To  go  from 
Spain  to  America,  except  to  a  few  favored  places,  was  not 
merely  to  go  into  exile,  but  to  renounce  civilization.  The 
restrictions  on  trade  ^prevented  the  colonists  from  starting 
with  the  achievements  of  European  civilization,  and  drove 
them  back,  in  many  cases,  to  the  barbarism  of  the 
natives. 

Compared  with  that  sort  of  thing,  England's  policy  was 
modern.  Her  statesmen  did  not  aim,  consciously,  to  bene 
fit  the  home  country  at  the  expense  of  the  planta-  The  English 
tions.  They  strove  to  make  the  parts  of  the  empire  idea 
helpful  to  one  another,  so  that  the  empire  as  a  whole 
might  be  self-supporting,  — -  independent  of  the  rest  of  the 
world  in  industry  and  economics.  In  large  measure  they 
wished  this  system  of  tariff  "protection"  for  the  industries 


110  "COLONIAL  AMERICA,"   1660-1690 

of  the  empire  as  a  means  toward  military  protection  —  like 
American  statesmen  after  the  war  of  1812. 

As  a  continuous  system,  the  English  policy  began  with 
the  "First  Navigation  Act"  of  1660.  This  law  had  two 
First  Navi-  purposes.  The  original  one  was  semi-military, 
gation  Act,  to  increase  the  shipping  of  the  empire.  Until  this 
time,  most  European  goods,  even  most  English 
goods,  had  been  carried  to  the  colonies  by  Dutch  vessels. 
England's  navy  had  sunk  low.  But  the  safety  of  the  island 
and  of  her  colonies  rested  upon  command  of  the  seas.  In 
that  day,  trading  vessels  were  easily  turned  into  war  vessels ; 
and  to  build  up  a  merchant  marine  was  a  natural  measure 
for  naval  protection.  Accordingly  this  law  provided  that 
all  trade  between  England  and  the  colonies  should  be 
carried  only  in  ships  owned,  and,  for  the  most  part, 
manned,  by  Englishmen  or  colonials,  —  "ships  which  truly  .  .  . 
belong  to  the  people  of  England  or  Ireland  ...  or  are  built 
of  and  belonging  to  any  of  the  said  Plantations  or  Territories 
.  .  .  and  whereof  the  master  and  three  fourths  of  the  mariners 
at  least  are  English."  (The  word  "English"  always  in 
cluded  the  colonials,  and  it  was  specifically  so  defined,  for  this 
passage,  in  a  supplemental  Navigation  Act  two  years  later.) 

This  part  of  the  Act  was  highly  successful.  Holland's 
carrying  trade,  and  her  naval  supremacy,  received  a  deadly 
blow.  Nor  did  this  part  of  the  law  discriminate  against 
the  colonies  in  the  interest  of  England.  Rather  it  directly 
benefited  them,  especially  the  northern  ones.  Temporarily, 
trade  suffered  from  lack  of  ships,  and  from  consequent  high 
freights ;  but  the  Act  created  the  great  shipbuilding  industry 
of  Neio  England.  In  less  than  twenty  years  the  colonies 
were  selling  ships  to  England.  By  1720  Massachusetts 
alone  launched  150  ships  a  year,  and  the  shipbuilders  of 
England  were  petitioning  parliament,  in  vain,  for  protection 
against  this  invasion  upon  their  ancient  industry.  The 
carrying  trade  of  the  empire  also  passed  largely  into  the 
hands  of  New  Englanders ;  and  this  trade  was  protected  by 
the  English  war  navy,  to  which  the  colonists  contributed 
only  a  few  masts  from  their  forests. 


THE  ENGLISH  NAVIGATION  ACTS  111 

A  second  part  of  the  law  (added  at  the  last  moment  by 
amendment)   somewhat  restricted  exports.     Sugar,  tobacco, 
cot  ton- wool,  ginger,   and    dye  woods   were   there 
after  to  be  carried  from  a  colony  only  to  Eng-  enumerated 
land  or  another  English  colony.     These  "enumer-  articles 
ated     articles"     were     all     semi-tropical.       New 
England  could  still  send  her  lumber,  furs,  fish,  oil,  and  rum 
to  any  part  of  the  world  —  if  only  they  were  carried  in  her 
own  or  English  ships.     Tobacco  was  the  only  "enumerated 
article"  produced  for  export  at  that  time  on  the  continent 
of  North  America1 ;  and  for  the  restriction  on  tobacco,  England 
gave  an  offset:  she  forbade  her  own  citizens  to  raise  tobacco, 
or  import  it  from  foreign  colonies,  so  giving  Virginia  and 
Maryland  a  monopoly  of  her  market. 

The  import  trade  was  first  restricted  by  the  Navigation 
Act  of  1663.     Thereafter,  it  was  ordered,  all  European  goods 
must  pass  to  the  colonies  only  through  English  ports.  The  Act  of 
This  act  was  designed  to  keep  colonial  trade  from  1663  as  to 
falling  into  the  hands  of  other  countries.     It  in-  imP°rts 
creased  the  profits  of  English  merchants ;  but,  to  guard  the 
colonists  against  paying  double  taxes,  a  rebate  of  the  Eng 
lish  import  duties  was  allowed  on  all  goods  reshipped  for  the 
colonies. 

This  was  as  far  as  the  system  went  until  after  1690.  The 
subtropical  colonies  could  export  their  products  only  to 
England  or  other  English  colonies;  all  imports  to  all  colo 
nies  must  come  through  England ;  all  ships  in  the  colonial 
trade  must  be  English  or  colonial.  A  Massachusetts  ship 
could  still  carry  any  product  of  that  colony  to  any  part  of 
the  world,  exchange  for  goods  there,  carry  these  goods  to 
England,  and  then  "reship"  them  for  an  American  port,  or 
exchange  them  for  other  European  goods  in  the  English 
markets,  to  be  then  carried  to  America.  In  1660  tariff 

1  American  students  find  it  hard  to  remember  that  the  navigation  laws  were 
adopted  mainly  with  a  view  to  the  English  West  Indies,  not  with  regard  to  the 
colonies  that  grew  later  into  the  United  States.  In  1697  Jamaica  alone  had  more 
commerce  with  England  than  all  the  continental  colonies  together  north  of  Virginia, 
while  the  West  Indies,  Maryland,  and  Virginia  (the  sugar  and  tobacco  colonies) 
had  seven  times  as  much  English  trade  as  all  the  other  colonies. 


NEW  ENGLAND,   1660-1690 

duties,  both  for  the  colonies,  and  for  England,  had  been  im 
posed  on  a  long  list  of  goods.  In  the  colonies,  however,  this 
Act  was  ahvays  practically  a  dead  letter.  There  was  no 
proper  machinery  to  enforce  it ;  and  no  serious  attempt  was 
made  to  do  so.  Whenever  the  restrictions  were  seriously 
troublesome,  they  were  evaded  by  smuggling.  In  1700,  it 
is  estimated,  one  third  the  trade  of  New  York  was  in  smug 
gled  goods. 

II.    NEW   ENGLAND,    1660-1690 

At  his  accession  in  1660,  Charles  II  found  himself  beset 
with  accusations  against  Massachusetts.  In  1656  Quakers 
Massachu-  had  appeared  in  that  colony.  Three,  who  per- 
setts  and  sisted  in  returning  after  banishment,  had  been 
hanged,  while  several  others,  women  among  them, 
had  been  flogged  brutally.  The  Quakers  complained  to 
Charles,  and  in  1660  he  ordered  the  colony  to  send  all  im 
prisoned  Quakers  to  England  for  trial.  But  the  men  of 
Massachusetts  were  resolved  to  permit  no  appeal  from  their 
own  courts.  They  chose  rather  to  empty  the  jails  and  drop 
the  persecution. 

Afterward,  for  a  time,  the  persecution  was  renewed,  with 
Charles'  approval,  but  no  more  executions  took  place. 
Imprisonments  and  whippings  were  the  common  fate  of 
Quakers  in  England  and  in  all  the  colonies  of  that  time 
except  Rhode  Island.  These  Quakers,  of  course,  were  not 
And  the  the  quiet,  sober  brethren  of  later  times  :  many  of 
Quakers  them  were  half-mad  fanatics.  It  was  a  little  hard, 
as  Lowell  says,  to  know  what  to  do  with  a  woman  who  per 
sisted  in  interrupting  your  honored  minister  in  his  sermon, 
calling  him  Priest  of  Baal,  and  breaking  empty  bottles  over 
his  head  (in  sign  of  his  emptiness),  or  who  "  bore  conclusive 
evidence  to  the  Fall  of  Man  by  walking  up  the  broad  aisle 
of  the  meeting-house  in  a  costume  which  that  event  had  put 
forever  out  of  fashion."  None  the  less,  the  three  execu 
tions  remain  a  bloody  blot  on  the  fame  of  Massachusetts. 
Nowhere  else  was  a  death  penalty  inflicted  by  law.  It  does 
seem  a  little  strained,  however,  to  speak,  as  a  recent 


CONNECTICUT  AND  RHODE  ISLAND  CHARTERS      113 


historian    does,    of    "wholesale    hangings"    of    Quakers   in 
Massachusetts. 

The  King  was  irritated  also  by  learning  that  Massachu 
setts  had  usurped  the  right  to  coin  money  (the  famons 
"Pine  Tree  Shillings")  during  the  Common-  otherin_ 
wealth,  and  that  two  of  the  "regicide"  judges  subordina- 
who  had  passed  sentence  on  his  father  were  still  * 
sheltered  in  New  England.  Worst  of  all,  perhaps,  the 
Bay  Colony  disregarded  the  Navigation  Acts,  and,  in 
1661,  even  adopted  a  daring  resolution  styling  such  legisla 
tion  "an  infringement  of  our  rights."  For  the  moment, 
Charles  contented  himself  with  demanding  that  an  oath 
of  allegiance  be  taken 
in  the  colony  ;  that  the 
Episcopalian  service  be 
permitted  ;  and  that  the 
franchise  be  extended  to 
all  men  "orthodox  in  re 
ligion  and  of  competent 
estate."  The  colony 
complied  with  the  first 
demand,  ignored  the 
second,  and  evaded  the 
third.  An  act  of  the  General  Court  did  provide  that  a  non- 
churchmember  might  be  made  a  freeman,  if  his  good  char 
acter  were  testified  to  by  the  minister  of  his  town  and  if  he 
paid  a  ten-shilling  "rate"  (local  tax).  But  the  Puritan 
ministers  gave  few  such  certificates  to  those  outside  their 
own  folds,  and  few  men  were  then  called  upon  to  pay  ten 
shillings  in  a  single  rate.  So  the  number  of  freemen  did 
not  much  increase. 

Connecticut,  New  Haven,  and  Rhode  Island  had  no  legal 
standing  in  England.  The  people  were  squatters,  and  the 
governments  unauthorized.  Now  that  order  was 

.  .  i-i  i  •          t/onnecticut 

restored  in  England,  it  was  plain  that  something  and  Rhode 

must  be  done  to  remedy  this  condition;   and  all 

three   colonies  sent  agents  to  England  to  secure 

royal  charters.     Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island  were  suc- 


A  PINE  TREE  SHILLING  (xii  pence).  From 
the  original  in  the  Collections  of  the  Massa 
chusetts  Historical  Society.  The  coin  bears  no 
allusion  to  England's  authority. 


114  NEW  ENGLAND,   1660-1690 

cessful  almost  beyond  belief.  They  were  left  with  self- 
government  nearly  as  complete  as  before.  In  neither 
colony  did  the  crown  appoint  the  governor  or  any  other 
important  official.  This  remarkable  liberality  was  due 
partly  to  the  careless  good  nature  of  Charles  in  the  early 
portion  of  his  reign ;  partly  to  an  enthusiasm  among  Eng 
lish  officials  just  then  for  the  colonies ;  and  partly,  perhaps, 
to  a  willingness  to  build  up  other  New  England  govern 
ments  so  as  to  offset  the  stiff-necked  Bay  Colony.  All  that 
the  Massachusetts  charter  had  become,  —  this  and  more 
these  new  charters  were  from  the  first.  They  made  the 
settlers  a  ''corporation  upon  the  place,"  and  sanctioned 
democratic  self-government.  With  good  reason  they  were 
cherished  and  venerated.  At  the  time  of  the  Revolution 
they  received  the  name  of  constitutions;  and  they  con 
tinued  in  force,  without  other  alteration,  in  Connecticut 
until  1818,  and  in  Rhode  Island  until  1842. 

A  glance  at  the  map  on  page  99  shows  sufficient  reason 
why  New  Haven  and  Connecticut  should  not  both  receive 
charters.  The  question  was  which  should  swallow  the 
other.  New  Haven  used  little  diplomacy  in  her  negotia 
tions  ;  and  possibly  she  was  too  much  of  the  Massa 
chusetts  type  to  find  favor  in  any  case.  Her  territory 
was  included  in  the  Connecticut  grant.  This  began  the 
process  of  consolidation  which  was  soon  to  be  tried  on  a 
larger  scale. 

Friction  with  Massachusetts  continued.  Episcopalians 
there  complained  still  that  for  thirty  years  they  had  been 
Continued  robbed  of  civil  and  religious  rights.  So  in  1664 
friction  Charles  sent  commissioners  to  regulate  New 
England  England  and  to  conquer  New  Netherlands  from 
and  Massa-  the  Dutch  —  with  whom  England  was  at  war. 
In  their  military  expedition  the  commissioners 
were  entirely  successful.  Connecticut,  Rhode  Island,  and 
Plymouth  then  recognized  their  authority  cordially,  and 
even  permitted  them  to  hear  appeals  from  colonial  courts; 
but  Massachusetts  still  gave  them  scant  welcome. 


THE  COMMISSIONERS  OF  1664  115 

The  matter  of  appeals  was  a  chief  point  in  the  commis 
sioners'  instructions.     It  was  to  be  the  means  of  enforcing 
royal    authority.      The    men    of    Massachusetts  The  corn- 
were    sternly    resolved    not    to   yield   the   point.  missioners 
After    weeks    of    futile    discussion,    the   commis-  question  of 
sioners   announced  a  day   when   they  would   sit  appeals 
as  a  court  of  appeals  in  Boston.     At  sunrise  on  that  day, 
by  order  of  the  Massachusetts  magistrates,  a  crier,  with 
trumpet,   passed   through  the  town,    warning    all   citizens 
not  to  recognize  the  court.     No  one  ventured  to  disobey 
the   stern    Puritan   government,   and   the    chagrined   com 
missioners  returned  to  England. 

There  they  at  once  recommended  that  Massachusetts  be 
deprived  of  its  charter.     But  the  next  year  the  victorious 
Dutch   fleet   was   in   the   Thames.     Then   came   the   great 
London  fire  and  the  plague.     The  Colonial  Board  did  re 
peatedly  order  Massachusetts  to  send  an  agent  to  England 
to   arrange   a   settlement;    but   the  colony  procrastinated 
stubbornly,  and  for  ten  years  with  success.     In  1675,  how 
ever,   a   great   Indian   outbreak,   known   as   King   Philip's 
War,  weakened  Massachusetts.     Just  at  this  time, 
too,  Charles,  entering  upon  a  more  despotic  period  chusetts 
at  home,  began  to  act  more  vigorously  toward  the  loses  her 
colonies;    and  in   1684   the  Court  of  the  Kings 
Bench  declared  the  charter  of  1629  forfeited  and  void. 

The  Lords  of  Trade  had  decided  that  to  have  so  many 
independent  governments  "without  a  more  immediate 
dependence  upon  the  crown"  was  "prejudicial"  , 

T^       !        ,,      .    ,  Consolida 

te  England  s  interest ;    and  they  drew  up  a  plan  tion  under 

for  the  union  of  Massachusetts,  Plymouth,  and 
the  Maine  and  New  Hampshire  towns,  under  one 
royal  governor-general.  T^hey  would  gladly  have  included 
Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island  in  the  plan,  and  so  con 
solidated  all  New  England  into  one  province,  but  the 
recent  charters  stood  in  the  way ;  andy  unlike  Massa 
chusetts,  these  colonies  had  given  no  excuse  for  legal  pro 
ceedings  .  against  them.  Still,  when  Charles  died  in  1685, 
James  II  forced  the  consolidation,  in  spite  of  the  charters. 


116  NEW  ENGLAND,   1660-1690 

He  appointed  Sir  Edmund  Andros  governor-general  of  all 
New  England,  and  instructed  him  to  set  aside  the  govern 
ments  of  Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island  by  force. 

The  original  plan  of  the  Lords  of  Trade  had  provided 
one  elected  legislature  for  New  England.  James  struck  out 
this  clause,  leaving  the  government  despotic  as  well  as 
unified,  —  despite  the  declaration  of  the  attorney-general 
in  England  that  the  colonists  had  the  right  "to  consent  to 
such  laws  and  taxes  as  should  be  made  or  imposed  on  them." 
James  also  once  more  extended  the  territory  to  which  the 
plan  should  apply.  He  was  already  proprietor  of  New 
York  and  New  Jersey  (page  128),  and  these  colonies  were 
soon  united  with  New  England  under  the  rule  of  Andros. 

Andros  was  a  bluff,  hot-tempered  soldier.  He  was  com 
mander  of  the  soldiery  he  brought  with  him  and  of  the  mili- 
Theruieof  tia ;  and,  with  the  consent  of  an  appointed  coun- 
Andros  cj}?  ne  was  authorized  to  lay  taxes,  make  laws,  ad 
minister  justice,  and  grant  lands.  His  management  of  mili 
tary  affairs  was  admirable,  and  he  saved  New  England  from 
serious  Indian  danger;  but  the  colonists  gave  him  scant 
credit.  In  other  matters,  naturally,  he  clashed  violently  with 
the  settlers.  He  insisted  that  Episcopalian  services  should  be 
held  on  at  least  part  of  each  Sunday  in  one  of  the  Boston 
churches.  To  the  Puritans  this  was  a  bitter  offense.  Land 
titles,  too,  were  a  fruitful  source  of  irritation.  In  granting 
lands,  the  colonies  had  paid  little  attention  to  the  forms  of 
English  law  or  to  proper 'precaution  against  future  confusion. 
Andros  provided  for  accurate  surveys,  and  compelled  old 
holders  to  take  out  new  deeds,  with  small  fees  for  registra 
tion.  He  treated  all  the  common  lands,  too,  as  crown  land. 

More  serious  was  the  total  disappearance  of  self-govern 
ment  and  even  of  civil  rights.  Andros  ordered  the  old  taxes 
to  be  continued.  Some  Massachusetts  towns  resisted ;  and 
at  Ipswich  a  town  meeting  voted  that  such  method  of  raising 
taxes  "did  infringe  their  liberty  as  free-born  English  sub 
jects."  The  offenders  were  tried  for  "seditious  votes  and 
writings,"  not  before  the  usual  courts,  but  by  a  special  com 
mission.  The  jury  was  packed  and  was  browbeaten  into  a 


ANDROS  AND  THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  1690 


117 


verdict  of  guilty,  and  leading  citizens  who  had  dared  to  stand 
up  against  tyranny  were  imprisoned  and  ruinously  fined. 

This  absolute  government  lasted  two  years  and  a  half. 
Massachusetts  was  getting  ready  to  rebel;    but  under  or 
dinary  conditions  a  rising  would  have  been  put  And  its 
down  bloodily.     Thanks  to  the  "  Glorious  Revolu-  overthrow 
tion"  of  1688  in  Old  England,  the  rising  when  it  came  was 

successful  and  bloodless. 


T  O  \V  N-  H  O  f  S  E 


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Uv  i-r-f'i"-lis  fuD3tu  taking  to  acme,  m  tije  hrfl  motion 
UthfuoOvf  tucw  luiwllv1  ignorant,  arc  ttr.imi  UP  ilie 
p:efrnr  C'Hjenrc  atto  J^rfcfftty  ta  acquaint  vour  £>-<.-,?//<•«,.-*,  to  it 
for  tto  Cvuetmg  ano -diCuvtrc  of  ito  J?eoplt  JiUuoiiws  tins 
Coumrr  from  ffjf  immwnu  Dangers  tbn>  nw.y  im;v.3  lie 
op:n,  an_D  arc  ftp  .iff  D  tmto,  auB  t'o:  v-'tv  o  w  ^  .u'crr  >  ecu-  juDge 
ir  itfffTai'v  t bat  vou  iontiiuit!)  feutrniDfT,  attti  Delitxr  up  ttjc 
^ot3;i!iii!ti!t  atiDfJctificationuolic  ^nutVteQ,  to  be  DifpoffD 
EfforDiii.t  toCrDci  anl  £>.nct .on  CJOiiuDe  Ciotot  of  £*W, 
toljiih  i-3  fiiOMfiilv  trpittiO  jn.iv  aa-ite,  ptamtfina  all  ^.curitp 
f?o:n  ui.iUnci- to  i'aur*clf,o:anr  other  or  vonr  ^mtUtmn  anb 
JfcjitlOifrsmp.iloaorClIafc:  brtifctet  art  aliurra  tbtp  toll 
tnO'.vr'our  tin:  la^uig  of  tfc  fortifications  op  Stojai,  if  anp  op= 
pottiou 


In  April,  1689,  Boston 
learned  that  James  II 
was  a  fugitive.  The 
new  king,  William  of 
Orange,  had  issued  a 
"Declaration,"  inviting 
all  boroughs  in  England, 
and  all  officials  unjustly 
deprived  of  charters  and 
positions  by  James,  to 
resume  their  former 
powers.  The  colonists 
assumed  that  this  sanc 
tioned  like  action  by 
them  also.  The  people 
of  Boston  and  neighbor 
ing  towns  seized  a  war 
vessel  in  the  harbor, 
imprisoned  Andros,  and 
restored  the  charter 
government.  Connecti 
cut  and  Rhode  Island 
also  revived  their  former 
charters. 

William     III     would 
have  been  glad  to  con 
tinue   part    Of   TheSettle- 
the  Stuart  policy  in  America.     He  wished,  so  far  ment  of 
as  possible,  to  consolidate  small  jurisdictions  into 
large  ones,  and  to  keep  the  governor  and  judges  in  each 


To  j>,   Edmond  Androjs   Knight. 


Willum 
7ht>i*js 


Sime*  BrulJIrtet 
Joba  fitches. 
El  til*  Co»!c. 
Ifaac  ^Jtlingiei, 
John  Fofler- 
I'fter   Sergeant. 
David  tt'u:<r'tj(,.tfe. 


Waif 
Samuel 


Btrtbtl.  GiJw. 


John  Netfox 
PoRon  Prin-cJ  by  Ss>» 


BOSTON'S  SUMMONS  TO  ANDROS  ;  from  the 
Massachusetts  State  Archives.  The  first 
signature  is  that  of  the  clergyman  who  soon 
after  uttered  the  words  about  "choice  grain" 
sent  into  the  wilderness  (page  62). 


118  NEW  ENGLAND,  1660-1690 

colony  dependent  upon  himself.  The  Connecticut  and 
Rhode  Island  charters  stood  in  the  way  of  a  complete  re 
arrangement  of  this  sort;  and  the  King's  lawyers  assured 
him  that  those  grants  still  held  good,  —  since  legal  proceedings 
against  them  had  never  been  completed.  Massachusetts  did 
not  fare  so  well.  Her  charter  had  been  formally  surrendered. 
The  colony  strove  skillfully  to  obtain  a  regrant  of  the  original 
patent ;  but  the  best  it  could  do  was  to  accept  a  new  one. 

To  conciliate  William,  the  promised  reform  in  the  fran 
chise  was  at  last  made  effective.  The  certificate  of  a  clergy 
man  as  to  the  applicant's  fitness  was  not  required,  and  the 
taxpaying  qualification  was  reduced  from  ten  shillings  to 
four.  Then  in  a  few  weeks  909  new  freemen  were  admitted 
—  more  than  in  the  preceding  sixteen  years.  Notwithstand 
ing  this  sudden  access  of  liberality,  there  were  within  the 
colony  considerable  bodies  of  people  dissatisfied  with  the 
Puritan  rule.  Several  petitions  were  sent  to  the  King  against 
the  renewal  of  the  old  charter,  -r-  one  with  signatures  of  two 
hundred  and  fifty  persons  who  call  themselves  "Merchants 
and  inhabitants  of  Boston." 

The  "Charter  of  1691"  created  a  government  for  Massa 
chusetts  more  like  that  of  Virginia  than  like  that  of  Con- 
Massa-  necticut.  The  crown  appointed  and  removed  the 
chusetts  governor.  The  Assembly  nominated  the  Council, 
royal  "  but  these  nominations  were  valid  only  after  the 
province  governor's  approval.  The  governor  could  adjourn 
or  dissolve  the  Assembly  at  will ;  and  he,  and  the  crown, 
held  an  absolute  veto  upon  all  its  acts.  The  higher  judiciary 
were  appointed  by  the  governor ;  and  appeals  to  the  king  in 
council  were  provided  for,  in  cases  where  the  sum  in  dispute 
amounted  to  £300. 

These  four  provisions,  to  all  practical  intents,  made 
Massachusetts  a  royal  province.  Two  other  provisions, 
thoroughly  praiseworthy,  overthrew  the  old  theocracy. 
Religious  freedom  for  all  Protestant  sects  was  promised ; 
and  the  franchise  was  given  to  all  men  owning  land  of 
forty  shillings  annual  value,  or  possessing  forty  pounds 


VIRGINIA  AND  THE  CAVALIERS  119 

in  personal  property.  This  alternative  was  a  liberal  addi 
tion  to  the  ancient  English  "  forty  shilling "  real  estate 
qualification. 

III.    VIRGINIA,    1660-1690 

During  the  Commonwealth,  many  of  the  dispossessed 
royalist  gentry  of  England  turned  their  faces  toward  the 
New  World,  —  as  the  Puritans  had  done  in  their  The  Cavalier 
hour  of  gloom  a  generation  earlier.  At  the  Res-  immigration 
toration,  the  royalists  who  were  still  in  England  expected  to 
get  back  the  lands  they  had  lost.  But  the  great  majority 
were  disappointed  of  this  hope,  and  so  the  movement  to 
America  received  new  impetus.  Practically  all  this  emigra 
tion  went  to  Virginia.  Between  1650  and  1670,  the  popu 
lation  of  that  colony  rose  from  15,000  to  40,000 ;  and  more 
than  half  of  this  increase  came  from  immigration. 

This  migration  ranks  in  importance  side  by  side  with  the 
earlier  ten-year  Puritan  movement.  It  made  Virginia  the 
land  of  the  Cavaliers.  In  this  period  there  appeared  in 
America  the  ancestors  of  the  Virginia  Harrisons,  Lees, 
Masons,  Madisons,  Marshalls,  Monroes,  Nelsons,  Nicho 
lases,  Pages,  Peytons,  Pendletons,  Randolphs,  Wythes, 
Washingtons.  These  country  gentry  fitted  easily  into  the 
rural  society  of  Virginia,  and  there  became  an  attrac 
tive  and  lovable  set  of  leaders.  They  were  somewhat  less 
active  intellectually  than  the  Puritan  leaders,  less  stimulated 
by  the  friction  of  town  life  and  by  religious  controversy,  and 
less  inclined  to  mark  out  new  ways  in  state  or  church.  But 
they  were  robust,  dauntless,  chivalrous,  devout,  and  deeply 
imbued  with  the  best  tradition  of  the  best  part  of  England 
(rural  England)  in  England's  greatest  century.  The  earlier 
migration  to  Virginia  had  given  that  colony  a  noble  history ; 
but  it  was  this  Cavalier  immigration  of  the  fifties  and  sixties 
which  a  century  later  flowered  into  Virginia's  splendid  galaxy 
of  Revolutionary  patriots ,,a$d,  a  little  later  still,  justified  to 
the  Old  Dominion  her  proud  title,  "Mother  of  Presidents." 

The  party  epithets,  Cavalier  and  Roundhead,  should  not 
blind  us  to  the  close  likeness  between  the  gentry  elements 


120  VIRGINIA,   1660-1690 

in  Massachusetts  and  Virginia.  The  Cavalier  immigrants 
were  not  graceless,  riotous  hangers-on  of  the  court,  slavishly 
subservient  to  despotism,  as  they  are  sometimes  pictured. 
They  were  God-fearing,  high-minded  gentlemen,  who  had 
loved  liberty  only  a  degree  less  than  they  had  feared  an 
archy,  —  men  of  the  same  social  stamp  and  habits  of  thought 
as  the  Winthrops,  Dudleys,  and  Humphreys  of  the  Bay 
Colony,  and  the  Hampdens,  Pyms,  and  Eliots  in  England, 
with  whom  they  had  stood  shoulder  to  shoulder  for  a  gen 
eration  of  constitutional  struggle  before  the  Civil  War,  and 
from  whom  they  separated  at  last  with  mutual  grief  when 
the  great  war  set  brother  against  brother. 

True,  the  first  effect  of  the  Cavaliers  on  politics  in  Virginia 
was  bad.  In  1660  a  new  Assembly  was  elected,  and  the 
Political  wild  enthusiasm  for  the  Restoration  filled  it  with 
reaction,  Cavalier  hotheads.  Since  1628,  a  new  Assembly 
had  been  chosen  at  least  once  in  two  years ;  but, 
by  an  arbitrary  stretch  of  power,  Governor  Berkeley  (page 
41)  kept  this  unfit  Cavalier  Assembly  alive,  without  a  new 
election  for  sixteen  years  —  much  as  his  royal  master  in  Eng 
land  did  with  his  unfit  Cavalier  Parliament.  Moreover, 
Berkeley,  in  this  second  term,  was  an  old  man,  tortured  by 
ill-health,  arrogant,  peevish,  vindictive,  —  an  easy  tool  for 
a  ring  of  greedy  favorites.  His  long  administration,  from 
1660  to  1677,  was  a  period  of  misgovernment  and  political 
reaction. 

With  the  Restoration,  governor  and  Council  ceased  to  be 
elective.  Berkeley  received  a  commission  from  King 
Charles ;  and  this,  he  felt,  freed  him  from  the  restrictions 
the  Assembly  had  placed  upon  him  (page  41).  According  to 
the  royal  instructions,  he  resumed  the  absolute  veto  and  the 
power  to  dissolve  and  call  Assemblies  at  his  will. 

These  changes  put  the  government  back  where  it  was 
before  the  Commonwealth.  But  this  was  not  all.  A  law 
of  1670  took  the  right  to  vote  from  all  but  landowners 
("freeholders"),1  and  in  local  government,  the  loss  was 

1  The  franchise  in  Virginia  had  been  exceedingly  liberal.  All  free  White  males 
had  had  votes,  —  including  former  servants  when  their  terms  had  expired.  In 


REACTION  AND  REBELLION  121 

even  more  serious.  The  county  raised  local  taxes  and  ex 
pended  them,  and  it  passed  "  by-laws "  of  considerable 
importance.  Until  the  Restoration  these  things  were  done 
in  the  county  court,  —  a  meeting  of  all  free  White  males ; 
but  now  most  of  these  powers  were  transferred  from  the  open 
court  to  a  Board  of  eight  "Justices"  in  each  county,  ap 
pointed  by  the  governor  from  the  more  important  landowners. 
Other  men  could  still  come  to  the  county  courts  as  spec 
tators,  but  their  political  power  was  limited  to  casting  a 
vote  now  and  then  in  the  election  of  a  new  Assembly. 

Along  with  this  political  reaction  went  many  other  serious 
faults.     Taxes  were  exorbitant,  and  were  expended  waste- 
fully.     There  was  much  unjust  "class  legislation,"  special 
such  as  the  exemption  of  Councilors  and  their  Privileses 
families   from    taxation.     The   sheriffs    (appointed    by   the 
governor  on  the  advice  of  the  county  justices)  and  other 
law  officers  charged  oppressive  fees  for  simple  and  necessary 
services ;  and  the  governor  granted  to  his  favorites  vexatious 
trade  monopolies. 

The  40,000  inhabitants  of  1670  included  2000  Negro  slaves 
and  6000  White  bond  servants.  There  were  also  several 
thousand  ex-servants  who  had  not  acquired  land  and  who 
remained  as  laborers  on  the  plantations  of  their  former  mas 
ters.  The  rest  of  the  population  consisted  of  a  few  hundred 
large  planters  and  a  large  body  of  small  planters.  Dis 
content  was  chronic  in  the  servant  class;  and  now  the  small 
planters  also  were  restive.  They  were  practically  unrepre 
sented,  and  they  felt  rightly  that  they  were  overtaxed  and 
discriminated  against.  The  navigation  laws  intensified 
their  grievances.  The  lack  of  vessels  enough  to  transport 
tobacco  to  the  English  market  did  not  much  hurt  the  large 
planters,  whose  crops  would  be  taken  care  of  first ;  but,  for 
a  time,  the  small  planter  often  found  his  entire  crop  left  on 
his  hands,  or  (if  he  shipped  at  all)  his  small  profits  were 
eaten  up  by  the  increased  freights. 

1655,  indeed,  a  law  was  passed  restricting  the  right  to  "householders,"  but  it  was 
repealed  the  next  year  on  the  ground  that  it  was  "hard  and  unagreeable  to  reason 
that  any  shall  pay  equal  taxes  and  not  have  a  voice  in  elections." 


VIRGINIA,   1660-1690 

These  conditions  led  to  the  first  "rebellion"  in  America. 
The  occasion  was  an  Indian  outbreak  which  Berkeley's 
Bacon's  inefficient  government  let  go  without  check. 
Rebellion  Finally  the  savages  ravaged  an  outlying  plantation 
of  Nathaniel  Bacon,  an  energetic  young  planter.  Bacon 
raised  troops  and  punished  the  Indians  terribly  in  two  cam 
paigns  ;  but  Berkeley  declared  the  young  captain  and  his 
followers  rebels,  because  they  had  secured  no  commission  for 
military  action. 

There  followed  an  obscure  quarrel  over  a  commission  ex 
torted  from  the  governor;  and  this  quarrel  merged  into  a 
civil  war.  From  a  valiant  Indian  fighter,  Bacon  was 
suddenly  transformed  into  a  popular  champion  and  a  demo 
cratic  hero.  Finding  arms  in  their  hands,  he  and  his  party 
tried  to  use  them  for  social  and  political  reform.  "Bacon's 
Rebellion"  became  a  rising  against  "special  privilege." 
The  fundamental  cause  was  not  discontent  at  the  inefficiency 
of  the  government  against  the  Indians,  but  social  discontent. 

Berkeley  was  deserted.  During  much  of  the  struggle,  he 
could  hardly  muster  a  corporal's  guard.  The  aristocracy, 
however,  did  not  join  Bacon.  They  were  too  much  opposed 
to  rebellion,  and  too  jealous  toward  the  democratic  features 
of  the  movement ;  so  they  simply  held  aloof  from  either 
side.  But  Bacon  was  supported  by  the  great  body  of  small 
planters,  especially  in  the  western  counties. 

These  sturdy,  honest  people  were  vilified,  of  course, 
especially  after  the  failure  of  the  rebellion,  by  aristocratic 
contemporaries.  One  Virginian  gentleman  refers  to  them 
as  "Tag,  rag,  and  bobtail."  Another  declared  that  Bacon 
"seduced  the  Vulgar  and  most  ignorant  People  (two  thirds 
of  each  county  being  of  that  Sorte)  Soe  that  theire  whole 
hearts  and  hopes  were  set  upon  him."  Another  describes 
the  rebels  as  "a  Rabble  of  the  basest  sorte  of  People  whose 
condicion  was  such  as  by  a  chaunge  could  not  admitt  of 
worse  .  .  .  not  20  in  the  whole  Route  but  what  were  Idle 
and  will  not  worke,  or  such  whom  Debaucherie  or  Idle 
Husbandry  has  brought  in  Debt  beyond  hopes  or  thought 


BACON'S  REBELLION  123 

of  payment  .  .  .  who,  for  the  Ease  of  the  Poore,  will  have 
no  taxes  .  .  .  [and]  talk  openly  of  shareing  men's  Estates." 

When  the  rebellion  began,  popular  clamor  forced  the 
governor  to  dissolve  his  fossilized  Assembly.  In  the  elec 
tion  of  a  new  one,  the  restrictions  upon  the  fran-  «« Bacon's 
chise  were  largely  ignored,  and  a  democratic  body  laws  " 
was  chosen.  One  peevish  gentleman  declared,  "Such  was 
the  pre valency  of  Bacon's  Party  that  they  chose,  instead 
of  Freeholders,  Free  men  that  had  but  lately  crept  out  of  the 
condition  of  Servants  (which  were  never  before  Eligible)  for 
their  Burgesses."  The  new  Assembly  is  known  as  Bacon's 
Assembly,  and  its  admirable  attempts  at  reform  are  called 
Bacon's  laws.  Manhood  suffrage  was  restored  ;  a  representa 
tive  Board  was  established  in  each  county  to  act  with  the 
Justices  in  all  matters  of  taxation  and  local  legislation ;  the 
exemptions  of  the  privileged  families  were  abolished ;  fees 
were  strictly  regulated ;  and  various  minor  abuses  were 
corrected. 

Bacon  himself  stood  for  an  even  more  democratic  program. 
Soon  after  the  meeting  of  the  Assembly  he  held  a  convention 
of  his  party  at  "the  Middle  Plantation,"  and  there  issued  a 
proclamation  in  the  name  of  "the  Commons  of  Virginia," 
signing  it  "Nath  Bacon,  Gen'l  By  the  Consent  of  the 
People."  This  document  denounced  the  group  of  Berkeley's 
favorites  as  "sponges"  that  had  sucked  up  the  public 
treasure,  and  as  "juggling  parasites,"  and  declared  all  who 
sheltered  them  to  be  "traitors  to  the  people.9' 

But  while  Bacon  was  still  in  full  tide  of  success,  a  sudden 
fever  carried   him   off  —  and  the  Rebellion   collapsed,   for 
want  of  a  leader.     Berkeley  took  a  shameful  and  Reaction 
bloody  vengeance,  until  removed  by  the  disgusted  triumphant 
King.     At  the  King's  command,  the  next  Assembly  declared 
all  "Bacon's  laws"  void;    and  so  the  "freehold"  franchise 
was  restored,  —  to  continue  two  centuries.1 

1  In  1736  a  "freehold"  for  voting  purposes  was  defined  to  be  the  ownership  of 
100  acres  of  wild  land,  or  50  acres  of  improved  land,  or  a  house  and  lot  in  a  town, 
—  the  house  to  be  not  less  than  24  feet  square.  Just  before  the  American  Revolu 
tion,  these  requirements  were  cut  down  one  half. 


124  VIRGINIA,   1660-1690 

Henceforth  all  leadership  belonged  to  the  small  class  of  great 
planters.  Each  man  of  this  class  was  not  merely  a  country 
The  rule  of  gentleman,  supervising  the  farming  of  large  es- 
the  gentry  tates  :  he  was  also  a  merchant,  with  huge  ware 
houses  and  with  agents  in  England.  He  sold  in  England  not 
only  his  own  tobacco,  but  also  much  of  that  of  the  small 
planters  about  him ;  and,  in  return,  he  imported  all  manu 
factured  articles  used  on  his  plantations  and  on  theirs,  except 
the  simple  implements  turned  out  by  the  plantation's  own 
carpenter  and  blacksmith.  He  was  also  a  lawyer,  and  a 
leader  in  society  and  in  politics.  He  was  usually  one  of  the 
ruling  "Justices"  of  his  county,  and  one  of  the  vestry  of  his 
parish ;  and,  if  he  did  not  sit  in  the  governor's  Council, 
he  was  pretty  sure  to  be  a  Burgess  —  or  at  least  to  have 
much  control  in  the  election  of  one. 

Much  has  been  said  above  on  the  admirable  qualities  of 
this  ruling  class.  One  darker  feature  remains  to  be  made 
plain.  These  men  gave  a  large  part  of  their  time  to  the 
public  service,  and  none  of  their  offices  had  salaries.  In 
time  of  public  peril,  too,  they  were  always  ready  to  give 
fortune  and  life  freely  for  the  public  need.  But  in  ordinary 
times,  many  of  them  paid  themselves  indirectly  for  their  de 
votion  to  the  public  service  by  what  would  to-day  be  called 
graft.  They  controlled  the  political  machinery ;  and  they 
saw  nothing  wrong  in  filling  their  pockets,  and  their  friends' 
pockets,  out  of  the  public  resources. 

Taxes  were  paid  commonly  in  tobacco.  The  "Receiver" 
was  some  one  of  the  coterie  of  great  planters.  It  was  easy 
Special  ^or  n™  ^°  accept  from  friends  and  other  influen- 
priviieges  tial  taxpayers  a  poorer  grade  of  tobacco  than  he 
would  take  from  a  smaller  planter.  All  tobacco  so 
received  was  afterward  sold  for  the  treasury.  The  English 
government  tried  earnestly  to  have  the  Receiver  sell  at  auc 
tion  ;  but  he  usually  managed  to  sell  "by  private  arrange 
ment"  -often  at  a  half  or  a  third  of  the  market  value 
-  to  friends  or  associates.  It  was  by  so  holding  together 
and  exchanging  "favors"  that  the  aristocracy  maintained 
their  power. 


ARISTOCRATIC  RULE  CONFIRMED  125 

Especially  was  the  public  land  a  source  of  private  riches. 
Governor  and  Assembly  readily  made  grants  of  wild  land  to 
almost  any  applicant;  but  law  required  the  grantee  to 
establish  a  certain  number  of  settlers  on  each  grant  within 
ten  years  —  one  settler  to  every  hundred  acres  —  or  the 
grant  had  to  be  declared  forfeited.  To  locate  and  survey 
a  tract  cost  somewhat,  and  to  "settle"  a  large  tract  was 
impossible  except  to  the  wealthy.  And  the  wealthiest  had 
ways  to  shift  this  burden.  In  1688  Colonel  William  Byrd 
secured  a  grant  of  more  than  three  thousand  acres.  He 
failed  to  "  settle  "  it ;  but  he  was  the  chief  officer  of  the  colonial 
landoffice,  and  he  managed  to  keep  back  the  declaration  of 
forfeiture  until  1701.  Then  the  tract  was  re-granted  at  once 
to  his  close  friend,  Nathaniel  Harrison,  who,  after  a  decent 
interval,  deeded  it  back  to  Byrd  for  another  ten  years' 
chance  to  settle.  Another  time,  Byrd  got  nearly  six 
thousand  acres ;  and  having  failed  to  settle  in  the  ten 
years,  he  had  it  transferred  to  his  son.  These  grants 
were  the  foundation  of  one  of  the  greatest  Virginia  family 
estates. 

The  small  farmer  in  Virginia,  after  Bacon's  failure,  had 
only  one  political  power :  once  a  year  or  once  in  two  years 
he  could  vote  for  a  member  of  the  Assembly.  Elections 
took  place  at  the  county  courts,  and  became  social  gather 
ings  also,  with  feasting  and  sports  —  wrestling,  running, 
shooting  at  the  mark  —  and  sometimes  with  brutal  rough- 
and-tumble  fights.  The  speechmaking  at  these  gatherings 
by  rival  candidates  afforded  no  mean  political  training ; 
and  as  large  a  part  of  the  free  White  population  came  out 
to  vote  in  Virginia  as  in  New  England.  But  the  common 
Virginia  farmer  voted  on  a  much  smaller  range  of  matters, 
and  much  less  often,  than  the  common  New  England  farmer. 
The  common  Virginian  had  no  voice  in  the  many  questions 
of  local  government  that  were  discussed  and  settled  in  the 
New  England  town  meeting,  or  any  part  even  in  choosing 
local  officials  —  which  was  so  large  a  part  of  New  England 
politics. 


126  VIRGINIA  AND  NEW  ENGLAND 

After  1691  (page  118)  the  central  governments  of  Massa 
chusetts  and  Virginia  grew  more  and  more  alike,  but  the 
Local  New  England  town  and  the  Virginia  county  grew 

government  farther  and  farther  apart;  and  the  influence  of 
a^dT^New  local  government  upon  society  is  so  great  that 
England  Virginia  as  a  whole  grew  more  aristocratic,  and 
Massachusetts  more  democratic.  We  have  traced  in  part 
the  development  of  these  two  types  of  local  government; 
but  we  ought  also  to  notice  that  the  difference  between 
them  was  largely  based  on  the  physical  differences  be 
tween  the  two  colonies.  In  Virginia  the  soil,  climate,  and 
products  made  it  profitable  to  cultivate  large  plantations 
by  cheap  labor  under  overseers.  In  Massachusetts,  with 
its  sterile  soil,  farming  was  profitable  only  when  a  man 
tilled  his  own  ground,  with  at  most  one  or  two  servants 
working  under  his  own  eyes.  In  Virginia,  therefore, 
population  became  scattered,  while  in  New  England  it  re 
mained  grouped  in  little  farm  villages.  In  Virginia  the  people 
could  not  easily  come  together  for  effective  action.  The 
county  became  the  political  unit,  and  control  fell  naturally 
to  the  wealthy  planters  in  small  Boards.  New  England  had 
no  counties  for  some  time,  and  then  only  for  judicial  districts. 
The  town  remained  the  political  unit ;  and  all  the  people 
of  the  town  came  together  frequently,  to  take  part  in 
matters  that  concerned  their  common  life.  The  Virginia 
type  of  local  government  developed  the  most  remarkable  group  of 
leaders  that  the  world  has  ever  seen.  The  New  England  type 
trained  a  whole  people  to  democracy  by  constant  practice  at 
their  own  doors,  and  so  Americanized  America. 

The  Middle  colonies,  whose  story  we  take  up  in  the  next 
chapter,  developed  an  intermediate  type  of  local  govern 
ment  with  both  towns  and  counties ;  and  this  mixed  type 
became  the  common  one  in  most  of  the  West  at  a  later  day. 

Even  in  New  England  the  town  meeting  has  lost  its 
vitality,  through  the  influx  of  foreign  population  and  the 
growth  of  city  life.  This  is  a  serious  matter.  The  original 
American  democracy  in  the  New  England  towns  was  "direct" 


NEW  YORK  127 

democracy.  In  its  first  form  this  cannot  be  restored. 
But  to  keep  our  political  life  sound,  we  must  find  substitutes 
for  it.  So  far  the  only  effective  one  suggested  lies  in  a  further 
development  of  the  initiative,  referendum,  and  recall,  - 
devices  of  direct  democracy  which  also  were  originated  in 
early  New  England. 

IV.    NEW   COLONIES,    1660-1690 

These  same  thirty  years,  1660-1690,  saw  the  number  of 
English  colonies  in  America  doubled  —  from  six  to  twelve. 
Soon  after  1660  the  beginnings  of  settlement  were  made  in 
the  Carolinas;  the  territory  soon  to  be  divided  into  New 
York,  New  Jersey,  and  Delaware  was  conquered  from  the 
Dutch ;  and  Penn  became  proprietor  of  Pennsylvania.  In 
all  these  new  colonies  the  settlers  waged  sturdy  consti 
tutional  struggles  for  self-government,  ignoring  or  oppos 
ing  the  proprietary  claims. 

While  New  York  was  the  Dutch  New  Netherlands,  the 
people  had  no  self-government  whatever.  The  colony  was 
a  huge  plantation  (like  early  Virginia)  under  The  English 
the  arbitrary  rule  of  the  "Director  General"  and  movement 
his  Council,  appointed  in  Holland.  There  were  government 
a  number  of  great  landlords  (patroons)  in  the  in  New 
colony ;  and,  in  local  affairs,  each  patroon  had  ] 
feudal  authority  over  the  villages  of  settlers  on  his  lands. 
The  only  promising  movement  for  self-government  under  Dutch 
rule  came  from  English  immigrants.  Four  English  towns 
had  been  established  on  Long  Island  while  it  was  claimed 
by  Connecticut.  These  afterwards  passed  under  the  rule  of 
New  Netherlands.  In  1653  a  meeting  of  representatives 
from  various  parts  of  the  colony  was  held,  to  demand  from 
Director  Stuyvesant  a  measure  of  self-government.  This 
meeting  was  inspired  by  the  English  towns,  and  it  was  domi 
nated  by  their  delegates.  The  "remonstrance"  to  Stuy 
vesant  was  drawn  in  the  English  language ;  the  signatures 
are  largely  English  names ;  and  the  document  contains 


128  NEW  COLONIES,   1600-1690 

the  democratic  English  phrases  of  that  day.  Stuyvesant, 
in  explaining  the  matter  to  the  authorities  in  Holland,  wrote  : 
"It  ought  to  be  remembered  that  the  Englishmen,  who  are 
the  authors  and  leaders  in  these  innovations,  enjoy  more 
privileges  than  the  Exemptions  of  New  Netherlands  grant 
to  any  Hollander." 

Before  true  representative  government  grew  out  of  this 
agitation,  came  the  English  conquest  of  New  Amsterdam  in 

1664  (page  114).  King  Charles  gave  the  con- 
wi^  repre-  quered  province  to  his  brother  James,  Duke  of 
sentative  York,  for  whom  it  was  renamed.  The  population 

was  mainly  non-English ;  and,  as  a  conquered 
people,  it  had  no  constitutional  claim  to  political  rights. 
Accordingly,  the  charter  to  James  said  nothing  of  any  share 
by  the  people  in  the  government.  In  spite  of  this,  the  gover 
nor,  Nichols,  found  himself  obliged  to  satisfy  the  Long  Island 
towns  by  promising  them  privileges  "equal  to  those  in  the 
New  England  colonies,"  and  it  soon  proved  necessary  to  intro 
duce  a  representative  Assembly  (1682).  Down  to  the  Revolu 
tion,  however,  the  governor  had  more  extensive  prerogatives 
in  New  York  than  in  any  other  colony. 

Early  Pennsylvania  owed  more  to  William  Penn  than  any 
other  colony  did  to  its  proprietor.  Penn  is  one  of  the  strik- 
wmiam  ing  figures  in  history.  Son  of  a  famous  and  wealthy 
Penn  English  admiral  who  had  added  Jamaica  to  Eng 

land's  colonies,  he  risked  his  inheritance,  as  well  as  all  pros 
pect  of  worldly  promotion,  in  order  to  join  the  Quakers. 
Happily  for  the  world,  his  resources  were  not  taken  from  him 
after  all,  and  he  kept  the  warm  friendship  of  men  so  differ 
ent  from  himself  as  the  royal  brothers,  Charles  and  James. 
Through  this  friendship,  Penn  was  selected  to  help  some 
Quaker  proprietors  organize  the  colony  of  New  Jersey,  and 
thereby  he  became  interested  in  trying  a  "Holy  Experiment" 
in  a  colony  of  his  own.  The  Council  for  colonial  affairs  had 
already  become  jealous  of  proprietary  grants  (page  115) ; 
but  James  readily  gave  him  the  old  Swedish  settlements  on 
the  Delaware,  —  then  part  of  conquered  New  York.  Penn, 


PENNSYLVANIA 


129 


however,  wished  a  still  freer  field  to  work  in,  and  soon  he 
secured  from  King  Charles,  in  consideration  of  a  large  debt 
due  him  from  the  crown,  a  grant  of  wild  territory  west  of 
the  Delaware  between  New  York  and  Maryland. 

Owing  to  geograph 
ical  ignorance,  the 
grant  conflicted  with 
those  of  Massachu 
setts  and  Connecticut, 
and  especially  with 
those  of  New  York 
and  Maryland.  The 
adjustment  with 
Maryland  was  not 
finally  accomplished 
until  1767,  when 
Mason  and  Dixon, 
two  English  survey 
ors,  ran  the  boundary 
line  that  goes  by  their 
name — commonly  re 
ferred  to  in  later  his 
tory  as  the  dividing  WILLIAM  PENN  AT  22  (before  his  conversion). 

line    between    North      From  the  Paintin£  b^  sir  Peter  Lelv-  now  in 
and  South. 


the  gallery  of  the  Pennsylvania  Historical 
Society. 


Penn's  charter  of  1680  gave  him  proprietary  power  like  that 
of  Baltimore  in  Maryland,  with  some  limitations.     Settlers 
were  guaranteed  the  right  of  appeal  from  colonial  And  Ws 
courts  to  the   king   in  council,   and  all  colonial  charter  for 
laws  were  to  be  subject  to  a  royal  veto.     The  Pennsy1- 

V  3.111  fl. 

Quaker  colony  was  required  to  tolerate  the  es 
tablished  English  church,  and  especial  emphasis  was  placed 
upon  obedience  to  the  navigation  laws.  A  unique  clause 
renounced  all  authority  on  the  part  of  the  crown  to  tax  the 
colonists  without  the  consent  of  the  Assembly  or  of  Parlia 
ment^  —  an  indirect  assertion  that  Parliament  might  tax 
the  colony.  The  Delaware  settlements  were  not  covered 


130  NEW  COLONIES  AFTER  1660 

by  the  charter,  but  had  a  similar  form  of  government  under 
the  same  proprietor. 

Pennsylvania  knew  none  of  the  desperate  hardships  that 
make  so  large  a  part  of  the  story  of  the  earlier  colonies. 
The    wealthy    Quakers    of    England    and    Wales 
Pennsyi-        helped    the    enterprise  cordially,   and   the  Men- 
vania:  nonites    (a    German    sect    somewhat    resembling 

Quakers)  poured  in  a  large  and  industrious  im 
migration.  In  1687  one  of  their  settlements  voiced  the 
first  protest  in  America  against  slavery :  "Those  who  steal 
or  rob  men,  and  those  who  buy  or  purchase  them,  —  are 
they  not  all  alike?  Here  is  liberty  of  conscience  .  .  .  and 
here  ought  to  be  likewise  liberty  of  the  body.  .  .  .  To  bring 
men  hither  or  to  robb  or  sell  them  against  their  will,  we 
stand  against."  Thanks  to  Penn's  wise  and  just  policy  with 
the  natives,  there  were  no  Indian  troubles.  Population 
increased  rapidly,  and  material  prosperity  was  unbroken. 
By  1700  (when  only  twenty  years  old)  the  colony  stood  next 
to  Virginia  and  Massachusetts  in  wealth  and  numbers. 
Unlike  other  colonies,  except  conquered  New  York,  the 
population  was  at  least  half  non-English  from  the  first,  - 
Welsh,  Germans,  Swedes,  Dutch,  French,  Danes,  and  Finns. 

Penn  took  no  thought  to  extend  his  own  powers.  His 
ideas,  for  the  time,  were  broad  and  noble.  "The  nations 
Penn  and  want  a  precedent  for  a  just  and  righteous  govern- 
his colonists  ment,"  he  wrote.  .  .  .  "The  people  must  rule." 
And  again,  in  a  letter  to  a  friend,  "I  propose  ...  to  leave 
myself  and  my  successors  no  power  of  doing  mischief  —  that 
the  will  of  one  man  may  not  hinder  the  good  of  a  whole 
country."  To  the  expected  settlers  he  proclaimed  (1681), 
"You  shall  be  governed  by  laws  of  your  own  making,  and 
live  a  free  and,  if  you  will,  a  sober  and  industrious  people." 

The  first  "Frame  of  Government"  granted  by  Penn  to  the 
colonists  was  very  liberal  but  it  was  clumsy  ;  and  even  with  a 
proprietor  so  unselfish  and  settlers  so  good,  politics  were 
confused  by  bitter  quarrels  for  some  years.  Finally  Penn  was 
persuaded  to  substitute  for  that  first  charter  a  new  funda 
mental  law,  the  Charter  of  1701.  The  colonists  accepted 


PENNSYLVANIA  CHARTER  OF  1701  131 

this  by  formal  compact,  and  it  remained  the  constitution  of 
Pennsylvania  until  1776.     The  governor  was  appointed  by 
the  proprietor,  and  had  a  veto  upon  all  legislation. 
He  was  aided  by  an  appointed  Council,  —  which  charter  of 
body  was  not  part  of  the  legislature.     The  people  1701  to  the 
chose   a   one-House  Assembly   each  year.      This 
body  had  complete  control  over  its  own  sittings :  the  charter  fixed 
a  date  for  the  annual  meeting,  and  provided  that  the  Assem 
bly  should  be  dissolved  only  by  its  own  vote.     Freedom  of  con 
science  was  guaranteed  to  all  who  believed  in  "one  Almighty 
God";    and  the  franchise  was  given  to  all  who  accepted 
Christ  as  the  "Savior  of  the  World"  and  who  owned  50 
acres  of  land  or  £50  personal  estate.     Pennsylvania  was  the 
only  colony  in  which  Roman  Catholics  had  political  rights 
in   the   eighteenth   century.     (Rhode   Island   disfranchised 
them  in  1719,  and  for  Maryland,  see  page  46.) 

The  provision  for  religious  freedom  was  declared  not 
subject  to  amendment.  All  other  parts  of  the  charter 
could  be  amended  by  the  joint  action  of  the  proprietor  and 
six  sevenths  of  the  Assembly.  This  was  the  first  written 
constitution  to  provide  a  definite  machinery  for  its  own  amend 
ment. 

The  "Restoration"  of  Charles  II  began  a  new  era  for  the 
English   race;    but   the   two   divisions   of   Englishmen   on 
opposite  sides  of  the  Atlantic  met  very  different  summary 
fates.     In  England  itself,  the  second  Stuart  period  for  leeo- 
(1660-1688)  was  a  time  of  infamy  and  peril.     In  169° 
America,  it  was  singularly  progressive  and  attractive.     For 
the  first  time  the  government  of  the  home  land  took  an 
active  part  in  fostering  the  plantations ;  and  the  separate 
colonies  first  began  to  have  a  common  history.     Three  great 
characteristics  marked  the  period  :  — 

English  territory  in  America  was  greatly  expanded. 

The  English  government  established  its  first  real  Three  char- 
" colonial  department,"  to  regulate  colonial  affairs  acteristics 
and  to  draw  the  plantations  into  a  closer  dependence  upon 
England. 


132  "COLONIAL  AMERICANS,"  1660-1690 

This  new  attitude  of  the  home  government,  both  in  its 
wise  and  unwise  applications,  stirred  the  colonists  to  a  new 
insistence  upon  their  rights  of  self-government. 

Thus  there  developed  an  "irrepressible  conflict"  between 
the  natural  and  wholesome  English  demand  for  imperial 
Thestru  le  unity  and  the  even  more  indispensable  American 
to  save  self-  demand  for  local  freedom.  Of  this  struggle  the 
government  most  picturesque  episodes  are  Bacon's  Rebellion  in 
Virginia  and  the  Andros  incident  in  New  England.  The  con 
flict  was  intensified  by  evil  traits  on  both  sides, — by  the  per 
sonal  despotic  inclinations  of  James  II  and  of  some  of  his 
agents  in  the  colonies,  and  by  pettiness  and  ignorance  on  the 
part  of  the  colonists  ;  and  each  party  was  blind  to  the  good 
on  the  other  side.  Still  the  unconquerable  determination  of 
the  colonists  to  manage  their  own  affairs,  even  though  in 
spired  in  part  by  narrow  prejudice,  is  the  central  fact  of  the 
period.  If  we  mark  the  period  by  one  phrase  we  may  best 
call  it  the  era  of  the  struggle  to  save  self-government. 

During  this  period,  too,  the  view-point  for  our  history  is 
shifting.  Until  1660,  the  colonists  are  Englishmen  —  enter- 
Engiish  prising  Englishmen  busied  in  establishing  them- 
pioneers  selves  on  scattered  outlying  frontiers.  After  1690, 
coionuS  they  are  Americans — colonial  Americans,  it  is  true, 
Americans  dependent  still  upon  England,  partly  from  custom, 
partly  from  affection,  and  largely  from  need  of  protection 
against  the  French  on  the  north. 

The  marks  of  this  period  are  all  found,  intensified,  in  the 
next  seventy  years,  —  with  the  addition  of  one  new  element, 
the  incessant  war  with  the  French  and  Indians. 


ENGLISH  CONTROL   VS.  SELF-GOVERNMENT         139 

the  well-intended,  if  not  always  tactful,  efforts  of  England 
to  preserve  American  forests  from  careless  and  greedy 
destruction,  and  to  prevent  the  issue  of  dishonest  colonial 
paper  money. 

Another  source  of  justifiable  irritation  was  the  "Sugar 
Act"  of  1733,  imposing  duties  on  sugar  and  molasses  from 
"foreign  plantations"  so  high  as  to  prevent  the  The  Sugar 
colonists  from  getting  these  articles  any  longer  Act  of  1733 
from  the  French  West  Indies,  except  by  smuggling.  The 
purpose  of  the  law  was  to  compel  the  colonies  on  the  con 
tinent  to  buy  their  sugar  from  another  English  colony, 
Jamaica,  where  the  sugar  planters  were  in  financial  distress  : 
it  aimed  to  take  from  the  mass  of  American  colonists  for 
the  benefit  of  a  specially  privileged  class  of  colonists.  The 
law  was  suggested  by  a  Boston  merchant  who  owned  plan 
tations  in  Jamaica. 

2.  Attempts  by  the  English  government  at  closer  political 
control  first  took  the  form  of  efforts  to  make  colonies  into 
royal  provinces.  For  sixty  years  Virginia  had  been  The  change 
the  only  royal  province.  In  1685  New  York  was  to  royal 
added  to  this  class,  when  its  proprietor  became  provm( 
king.  William  III,  at  the  opening  of  his  reign,  made  Mas 
sachusetts  practically  a  royal  government  (page  118),  and, 
by  a  stretch  of  authority,  he  cut  off  New  Hampshire  from 
Massachusetts  and  gave  it  also  that  kind  of  government. 
Then  came  a  series  of  attempts  to  change  all  colonies  into 
royal  provinces.  In  the  remaining  charter  and  proprietary 
colonies  the  Board  of  Trade  found  many  just  grounds  for 
complaint.  Besides  the  old  offenses  (evasion  of  navigation 
laws,  refusals  to  permit  appeals  to  England,  and  discrimina 
tion  against  the  English  Church),  the  Board  was  annoyed 
by  Rhode  Island's  stubborn  persistence  in  a  shameful  trade 
with  pirates ;  by  the  refusal  of  Connecticut  to  let  royal 
officers  command  her  militia  in  war  against  the  French; 
and  by  the  absence  in  Pennsylvania  and  New  Jersey  of  all 
militia.  Experience  had  shown  that  English  courts  could 
not  be  depended  upon  to  annul  colonial  charters  (pages  74, 


140  "COLONIAL  AMERICANS,"   1690-1763 

118),  and  so,  in  1701,  the  Board  recommended,  in  a  strong 
paper,  that  the  eight  charter  and  proprietary  governments 
be  "reunited"  to  the  crown  by  act  of  parliament.  A  bill 
to  this  effect  passed  two  readings,  with  little  opposition; 
but  the  hurried  departure  of  King  William  for  a  campaign 
in  Ireland  forced  a  timely  adjournment  of  parliament.  The 
following  year  another  bill  was  being  prepared,  when  the 
death  of  the  King  compelled  parliament  to  dissolve.  In  the 
next  reign  these  efforts  were  renewed.  But  time  had  been 
given  for  the  proprietors  in  England  and  the  charter  govern 
ments  in  America  to  rally  all  their  influences,  public  and 
secret.  The  Whigs  in  parliament  had  great  respect  for 
charters  and  for  "vested  rights" ;  and  the  movement  came 
to  nothing. 

The  English  government  then  fell  back  upon  the  early 
policy  of  William  III,  and  attacked  colonial  grants  one  by 
one,  as  occasion  offered.  Before  1730,  by  taking  advantage 
of  a  legal  flaw,  a  serious  disorder,  or  of  the  willingness  of  an 
embarrassed  proprietor  to  sell,  it  added  New  Jersey  and 
North  and  South  Carolina  to  the  list  of  royal  provinces. 
Out  of  the  last  named,  Georgia  was  carved  for  a  proprietary 
province  a  little  later ;  but  it,  too,  soon  came  under  a  royal 
government.  Down  to  the  Revolution  Maryland  and  Penn 
sylvania  remained  proprietary,  and  Connecticut  and  Rhode 
Island  remained  "corporate"  colonies. 

The  common  distinction  between  royal,  proprietary,  and 
charter  colonies  is  not  of  great  consequence.  Connecticut 
and  Rhode  Island  did  keep  their  right  to  elect  all 
branches  of  their  government.  Pennsylvania,  not 
contrasts  classed  as  a  charter  colony,  possessed,  through  its 
nesses6"  grant  from  Penn,  the  next  freest  constitution,  in 
the  security  of  its  legislature  from  interruption. 
Massachusetts,  with  its  charter,  had  less  valuable  privileges, 
and  resembled  a  royal  province  in  all  practical  respects. 
But  the  really  important  thing  about  the  colonial  governments 
was  their  resemblances.  All  had  representative  Assemblies, 
with  no  small  degree  of  control  over  their  governors,  and 


ENGLISH  CONTROL   VS.  SELF-GOVERNMENT         141 

all  had  the  private  rights  of  Englishmen,  —  jury  trial,  free 
speech,  freedom  from  arbitrary  imprisonment,  —  which  were 
not  then  found  in  the  colonies  of  any  other  country. 

The  next  step  in  the  new  colonial  policy  was  to  attempt 
closer  control  in  the  charter  and  proprietary  colonies  :   (1)  to 
require  royal  approval  for  the  appointment  of  pro 
prietary  governors;    (2)    to  place   the  militia  of 
charter  colonies  under  the  command  of  a  neigh-  charter  and 
boring  royal  governor;    (3)  to  set  up  appointed 
admiralty  courts,  without  juries,  so   as  to  prevent 
evasion  of    the    navigation    laws ;   (4)   to    compel    colonial 
courts  to  permit  appeal  to  the  privy  council  in  England ; 

(5)  to  enforce  a  royal  veto  upon  colonial   legislation ;   and 

(6)  to  free  royal  and  proprietary  governors  from  dependence 
upon  colonial  Assemblies.     The  last  two  points  require  some 
explanation. 

(a)  In  theory,  the  king  always  possessed  a  veto,  just  as 
in  parliament ;  but,  even  in  Virginia,  so  early  a  royal  colony, 
he  rarely  exercised  it  until  after  Bacon's  Rebellion.  The  royal 
Thereafter,  it  was  expressly  reserved  in  all  colo-  veto  on 
nial  grants  (as  in  that  to  Penn  and  in  the  Massa-  ( 
chusetts  charter  of  1691),  and  the  right  was  emphasized  in 
every  commission  to  a  governor  of  a  royal  province.    True, 
a  colonial  law  went  into  effect  pending  adverse  royal  de 
cision  ;  but  the  veto  was  no  mere  form.    Scores  of  important 
statutes  were  disallowed,  sometimes  after  they  had  been  in 
force  for  years.     Fifteen  Massachusetts  laws  of  1692  were 
vetoed  in  1695,  and  eight  statutes  of  North  Carolina  as  late 
as  1754. 

(6)  Even  in  a  royal  province,  the  governor  often  showed 
little  desire  to  carry  out  English  instructions  that  conflicted 
with  colonial  views.  Partly,  this  was  because  the 
governor,  living  in  close  touch  with  the  colonists, 
was  likely  to  see  their  side  of  the  case;  but  more  salaries 
commonly  it  was  because  his  salary  depended  upon 
his  keeping  up  a  good  understanding  with  the  colo 
nial  legislature.  Every  governor,  in  the  words  of  a  colo- 


142  "COLONIAL  AMERICANS,"   1690-1763 

nist,  had  "two  Masters,  one  who  gives  him  his  commis 
sion,  and  one  who  gives  him  his  Pay."  If  the  Assembly 
passed  a  bill  distasteful  to  the  home  government,  the 
governor  could  veto  it ;  but  the  Assembly  might  then  cut 
down  his  salary,  or  leave  it  altogether  out  of  the  vote  of 
supply,  —  which,  according  to  good  English  custom,  was 
always  the  last  business  of  the  session.  To  free  the  governors 
from  this  dependence  upon  the  popular  will,  the  English 
government  tried  for  many  years,  in  vain,  to  secure  from  the 
Assemblies  a  standing  grant  for  such  salaries.  In  1727, 
Burnet,  governor  of  Massachusetts,  laid  before  the  Assembly 
his  instructions  to  secure  from  that  body  a  fixed  grant  of 
£1000  a  year.  Refusal,  he  said,  would  be  taken  by  the  King 
as  "a  manifest  mark  of  undutiful  behavior."  On  the  other 
hand,  a  Boston  town  meeting  bluntly  called  upon  the  As 
sembly  "to  oppose  any  bill  .  .  .  that  may  in  the  least 
bear  upon  our  natural  rights  and  charter  privileges,  which, 
we  apprehend,  the  giving  in  to  the  King's  instructions  would 
certainly  do."  Burnet  was  popular,  as  well  as  able;  and 
the  Assembly  voted  him  not  £1000,  but  £1700,  for  one  year. 
The  governor  indignantly  refused  to  be  "bribed"  into  prov 
ing  false  to  his  instructions.  The  Assembly  raised  their 
offer,  still  in  vain.  For  three  years  the  struggle  continued. 
Then  a  new  governor,  in  want  of  money,  petitioned  the 
crown  to  allow  him  to  receive  the  annual  grant  temporarily. 
The  English  government  assented,  and  Massachusetts  had 
won. 

To  the  credit  of  the  monarchs,  no  attempt  was  made,  in  this 
long  contest,  to  suppress  any  colonial  Assembly.  Indeed, 
Colonial  while  the  English  government  did  in  some  re 
gains  spects  extend  its  powers  in  the  colonies,  still  the 
Assemblies  also  made  substantial  gains.  Everywhere  the 
elected  Houses  claimed  the  powers  and  privileges  of  the 
English  House  of  Commons.  Especially  did  they  get  more 
control  over  finances.  After  long  struggles,  they  shut  out 
the  appointed  Councils  from  any  authority  over  money 
bills  (just  as  in  England  the  House  of  Lords  was  no  longer 


GAIN  FOR  FREE  SPEECH  143 

permitted  to  amend  or  reject  bills  of  supply),  and,  in  each 
colony,  they  created  a  Treasurer,  not  appointed  by  the 
governor,  but  elected  by  the  Assembly. 

This  step  grew  out  of  an  earlier  practice  of  occasionally 
making  the  Speaker  of  the  Assembly  the  guardian  of  funds 
appropriated  for  some  particular  purpose.  Sometimes  an 
Assembly  encroached  upon  the  authority  of  the  royal 
governor  even  further,  by  turning  over  executive  functions 
to  commissions  appointed  by  itself.  In  this  appearance  of 
new  officers  alongside  the  governor,  we  have  the  germ  of 
the  character  of  our  later  State  executives  in  America,  - 
several  heads  (governor,  auditor,  treasurer,  etc.),  each  in 
dependent  of  the  others.  This  is  by  no  means  the  only 
case  where  a  movement  essential  to  liberty  in  one  era  has 
burdened  later  times  with  an  unsatisfactory  heritage. 

Private  rights,  too,  were  more  dearly  defined.     With  the 
approval  of  the  crown  lawyers,  the  doctrine  was  established 
that  the  Common  Law  of  England,  with  all  its  The  English 
emphasis  on  personal  liberty,  was  also  the  com-  Common 
mon  law  of  the  colonies  even  without  express  en 
actment.     And  at  least  one  advance  was  made  in  the  col 
onies  over  English  custom  in  the  matter  of  personal  liberty 
-  namely,  a  greater  safety  for  a  free  press. 

In  1735  a  tyrannical  governor  of  New  York  removed  the 
chief  justice  of  the  colony  from  office  for  personal  reasons. 
John  Zenger  in  his  Weekly  Journal  published  vig-  A  free 
orous  criticism  of  this  action,  declaring   that,  if  press:  the 
unchecked,  it  threatened   slavery  to  the  people.  ' 
Zenger  was  prosecuted  for  criminal  libel.     In  England  at 
that  day  such  a  prosecution,  backed  by  the   government, 
was  sure  of  success.     In  New  York,  the  new  chief  justice, 
too,  showed  a  determination  to  secure  a  conviction.     He 
tried  to  limit  the  jury  to  deciding  only  whether  Zenger  was 
responsible  for  the  publication   (a  matter  not  denied),  re 
serving   to   himself   the   decision  whether  the  words  were 
punishable.     This  was  the  custom  of  English  courts  in  such 
cases  to  a  much  later  period.     But  Zenger's  lawyer  in  a 


144  "COLONIAL  AMERICANS,"   1690-1763 

great  speech  argued  that  public  criticism  is  a  necessary 
safeguard  for  free  government,  and  that,  to  prevent  the 
crushing  out  of  a  legitimate  and  needed  criticism,  the  jury 
in  such  a  trial  must  decide  whether  the  words  used  were 
libelous  or  true.  This  cause,  said  he,  is  "not  the  Cause 
of  a  poor  Printer  alone,  nor  of  New  York  alone,"  but 
of  "every  free  Man  on  the  Main  of  America."  He  called 
upon  the  jury  to  guard  the  liberty  "to  which  Nature 
and  the  Laws  of  our  Country  have  given  us  the  Right,  — 
the  Liberty  of  exposing  and  opposing  arbitrary  Power 
(in  these  parts  of  the  World  at  least)  by  speaking  and 
writing  the  Truth."  "  A  free  people"  he  exclaimed  bluntly, 
"are  not  obliged  by  any  Law  to  support  a  Governor  who  goes 
about  to  destroy  a  Province."  The  jury  insisted  upon  this 
right,  and  declared  Zenger  "Not  guilty."  Gouverneur 
Morris  afterward  styled  this  acquittal  "the  morning  star 
of  that  liberty  which  subsequently  revolutionized  America." 

The  whole  constitutional  conflict  outlined  in  this  chapter 
was  one  of  the  chief  preparations  for  the  Revolution ;  and 
Preparation  tne  training  secured  by  the  colonists  in  these 
for  the  struggles  explains  the  skill  with  which  they  waged 

Revolution     ^  long  opposition  to  George  III,  from  1760  to 

1775,  before  the  contest  became  open  war.  The  English 
historian,  Doyle,  says  of  the  period  1690-1760:  "The 
demands  made  upon  the  colonists,  [and]  the  restrictions 
imposed  upon  them,  were  often  in  perfect  conformity 
with  equity  and  reason.  [But]  it  can  seldom  be  said  that 
the  method  of  enforcement  [by  England]  was  sympathetic, 
or  even  intelligent.  .  .  .  The  temper  of  mind,  the  habits 
of  thought  and  action,  which  made  successful  resistance 
possible  [at  the  time  of  the  Revolution]  had  their  origin 
in  these  disputes,  which  had  kept  alive  an  abiding  spirit  of 
bitterness  and  vindictiveness  between  the  colonists  and  those 
set  in  authority  over  them,  and  had  furnished  the  former  with 
continuous  training  in  the  arts  of  political  conflict." 


CHAPTER  VIII 

COLONIAL   LIFE 

BEFORE  we  pass  to  the  separation  from  England,  it  remains 
to  gather  up  a  number  of  topics  vitally  related  to  colonial 
life,  which  have  not  fitted  into  our  brief  chronological 
story.  Some  of  these  have  to  do  mainly  with  peculiarities 
due  to  existence  on  a  distant  frontier;  some  belong  essen 
tially  to  the  age. 

1.  Much  colonial  legislation  goes  under  the  name  of  Blue 
Laws.  The  term  signifies  either  undue  severity  in  punishing 
ordinary  crime,  or  unreasonable  interference  with  tt 
personal  liberty.  In  the  first  sense,  —  that  of  Laws" 
bloody  laws,  —  the  colonists  could  not  be  blamed 
by  Europeans  of  their  day.  Everywhere,  life  was 
still  harsh  and  cruel ;  but  American  legislation  was  more 
humane  and  rational  than  that  of  England  or  France. 
True,  many  barbarities  did  survive.  The  pillory  and  whip 
ping  post,  with  clipping  of  ears,  were  in  universal  use.  As 
late  as  1748,  a  Virginian  law  required  every  parish  to  have 
these  instruments  ready,  and  suggested  also  a  ducking 
stool  for  "brabbling  women."  Prison  life  was  unspeakably 
foul  and  horrible.  Death  was  the  penalty  for  many  deeds 
not  now  considered  capital  crimes  in  any  civilized  land; 
and  many  punishments  seem  to  us  ingeniously  repulsive, 
such  as  branding  for  robbery  or  other  crimes.  (In  nearly 
any  part  of  the  world  outside  New  England  the  Hester 
of  Hawthorne's  Scarlet  Letter  would  have  borne  the  shame 
ful  insignia  of  her  sin,  not  worked  upon  her  dress,  but 
burnt  upon  her  flesh.)  When  the  colonies  were  growing  up, 
there  were  over  fifty  offenses  punishable  with  death  in  Eng 
land.  This  number  increased  to  about  two  hundred  before 
the  "sanguinary  chaos"  was  reformed  in  the  nineteenth 

145 


146  COLONIAL  LIFE 

century.  Not  more  than  eighteen  offenses  were  ever 
"capital"  in  New  England.  Virginia  ran  the  number  up 
to  twenty-seven;  but  in  large  part  this  was  due  to  her 
cruel  slave  laws,  which  were  rarely  enforced. 

In  the  second  meaning  of  Blue  Laws,  —  that  of  inquisi 
torial  legislation,  —  New  England  comes  in  for  just  criticism. 
Not  that  she  was  much  worse  than  the  rest  of  the  world  even 
in  that.  To-day,  as  a  rule,  legislation  aims  to  correct  a 
man's  conduct  only  where  it  directly  affects  other  people; 
but  in  that  day,  all  over  Christendom,  the  state  tried  to 
regulate  conduct  purely  personal.  This  was  because  state 
and  church  were  so  closely  connected.  In  Virginia,  the 
colonial  law  required  attendance  at  church,  and  forbade 
traveling  on  Sunday.  In  the  Puritan  colonies  such  legislation 
was  more  minutely  vexing,  —  and  more  rigorously  enforced. 
But  even  here  the  many  laws  against  "immodest  fashions 
and  costly  apparel "  had  to  yield  somewhat  to  the  gentle 
Puritan  mothers  —  as  is  manifest  in  a  naive  entry  of  Win- 
throp's  in  1638  :  - 

"The  court,  taking  into  consideration  the  great  disorder  general 
through  the  country  in  costliness  of  apparel,  and  following  new 
fashions,  sent  for  the  elders  of  the  churches,  and  conferred  with 
them  about  it,  and  laid  it  upon  them,  as  belonging  to  them,  to 
redress  it,  by  urging  it  upon  the  consciences  of  their  people, 
which  they  promised  to  do.  But  little  was  done  about  it ;  for 
divers  of  the  elders'  wives,  etc.,  were  in  some  measure  partners  in  this 
general  disorder" 

Moreover,  the  most  common  specific  charges  against  New 
England  are  wholly  false.  It  is  still  widely  believed  that 
in  Connecticut  the  law  forbade  a  woman  to  kiss  her  child 
on  Sunday;  that  it  prohibited  playing  on  "any  instrument 
of  music  except  the  drum,  trumpet,  and  jewsharp";  and 
that  it  required  "all  males"  to  have  their  hair  "cut  round 
And  Mr  according  to  a  cap."  These  "laws"  are  merely 
Peters'  in-  the  ingenious  vengeance  of  a  fugitive  Tory  clergy 
man  (S.  A.  Peters),  who  during  the  Revolution 
published  in  England  a  History  of  Connecticut.  The  ve- 


THE  DECAY  OF  PURITANISM  147 

racity  of  the  Reverend  Mr.  Peters  may  be  judged  from 
other  items  in  his  History.  He  pictures  the  inhabitants 
of  a  Connecticut  village  fleeing  from  their  beds,  mistak 
ing  the  croaking  of  an  "army  of  thirsty  frogs"  (on  their 
way  from  one  pond  to  another)  for  the  yells  of  an  attack 
ing  party  of  French  and  Indians;  and  he  describes  the 
rapids  of  the  Connecticut  River  thus,  --  "Here  water 
is  consolidated  without  frost,  by  pressure,  by  swiftness, 
between  the  pinching,  sturdy  rocks,  to  such  a  degree  of 
induration  that  an  iron  crow  [bar]  floats  smoothly  down  its 
current!"  This  quaint  book  contains  a  list  of  forty-five 
alleged  "Blue  Laws."  Some  are  essentially  correct,  and 
most  have  some  basis  in  fact ;  but  a  few  are  the  mere 
malicious  inventions  mentioned  above,  and  it  is  by  these 
almost  alone  that  the  "code"  is  generally  known. 

2.    Soon  after  1650  there  began  a  slow  decay  in  Puritanism. 
The  historian  Freeman  complains  that  students  of  history 
go  wrong  because  they  think  that  "all  the  An-  The  three 
cients   lived   at  the  same  time."     Nor  have   all  generations 

,  i       T»  if     i  i  •        i  .1  .  •  T     •  °f  Puritans 

the  Moderns  lived  at  the  same  time.  It  is  essen-  in  the  i?th 
tial  to  see  the  colonist  of  1730  or  1700  as  a  century 
different  creature  from  his  great  grandfather  of  1660  or 
1630.  Even  in  the  first  century  in  Massachusetts,  the 
three  generations  had  each  its  own  character.  The  first 
great  generation  of  founders  (the  leaders,  at  least)  were 
strong,  genial,  tactful  men,  broadened  by  European  culture 
and  by  wide  experience  in  camp  and  court,  and  preserving 
a  fine  dignity,  sometimes  tender  graces  even,  in  their  stern 
frontier  lives.  Their  Puritanism  was  sometimes  somber, 
but  never  petty.  It  was  like  the  noble  Puritanism  of  Milton 
in  his  youth,  —  the  splendid  enthusiasm  of  the  "spacious 
Elizabethan  days,"  sobered  and  uplifted  by  moral  earnest 
ness  and  religious  devotion.  Winthrop  and  Cotton  and 
their  fellows,  who  had  left  ancestral  manor  houses  to  dwell 
in  rude  cabins  for  conscience'  sake,  lived  an  exalted  poem 
day  by  day  in  their  unfaltering  conviction  of  the  Divine 
abiding  within  them  and  around  them.  But  their  children 


148  COLONIAL  LIFE 

could  not  easily  rise  to  this  height.  As  early  as  1646,  the 
Massachusetts  General  Court  laments  the  desecration  of 
the  Sabbath  by  "youths  and  maydes"  "uncivilly  walkinge 
in  the  streets  and  fields  .  .  .  and  otherwise  misspending 
that  precious  time " ;  and  in  the  records  of  Watertown 
for  1669  we  read,-  "It  was  agreed  that  the  selectmen 
shall  take  their  turnes,  every  man  his  Day,  to  site  upon 
the  Gallary  to  looke  to  the  youthes  ...  in  the  time 
of  publike  exercises  on  the  Lords  Days,  and  that  the 
two  Constables  shalbe  desired  to  take  their  turnes  to  site 
there  also." 

Grown  to  manhood,  these  sons  and  grandsons  of  the 
founders  laid  aside  frivolity,  it  is  true,  and  became  solemn 
and  stern;  but  they  show  Puritanism  in  the  sere.  The 
necessities  of  frontier  life  made  them  nimble-witted,  in 
quisitive,  pushing,  better  able  than  their  fathers  "to  find 
their  way  in  the  woods"  and  to  rear  crops  and  children 
under  New  World  conditions.  But  the  unceasing  struggle 
and  petty  privations  (theirs  not  by  choice  now,  but  by 
compulsion),  made  their  lives  harsh  and  unlovely  and  bitter. 
Most  of  the  finer  thought  and  broad  outlook  of  the  first 
generation  fell  away,  and  they  had  never  felt  its  splendid 
self-sacrifice.  Faith  gave  way  to  formula ;  inspiration  was 
replaced  by  tradition  and  cant.  The  second  generation 
lost  the  poetry  out  of  Puritanism ;  the  third  generation 
began  to  lose  the  power.  Much  that  is  vital  to  man  always 
remained.  Puritanism  continued  to  teach  the  supremacy 
of  conscience  with  emphasis  never  excelled  in  religious 
movements;  and,  in  its  darkest  period,  sweet  and  gentle 
lives  sometimes  blossomed  out  of  it.  But  before  1700  it 
showed  a  great  decline. 

That  decay  was  associated  with  a  marked  increase  in 
gloom  in  New  England  life.  Gloom  had  been  an  incident 
An  increase  of  Puritanism  in  its  best  day :  now  it  became  so 
of  gloom  dominant  as  to  distort  religion.  The  damnation 
scene  of  Wigglesworth's  Day  of  Doom  was  long  the  most 
popular  "poetry"  in  New  England.  Two  extracts  may 
indicate  its  character  for  literature  and  for  thought :  — 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION  149 

"  They  cry,  they  roar,  for  Anguish  sore, 
And  gnash  their  Tongues  for  horror : 
But  get  away  without  delay ; 
Christ  pities  not  your  Cry. 
Depart  to  Hell :    there  you  may  yell 

and  roar  eternally. 

***** 

"  God's  direful  Wrath  their  bodies  hath 
Forever  immortal  made  .   .   . 
And  live  they  must,  while  God  is  just, 
That  He  may  plague  them  so." 

Among  these  "damned,"  over  whose  fate  the  poet  gloats 
in  this  way,  he  is  careful  to  include  all  unbaptized  infants  as 
well  as 

"  civil  honest  men, 

That  loved  true  Dealing  and  hated  Stealing, 

Nor  wronged  their  brethren," 

but  whose  righteousness  had  not  been  preceded  by  "effec 
tual  calling,"  in  the  grotesque  phrase  of  the  time. 

To  modern  ears  this  seems  comic.  But  men  of  that  day 
preferred  Wiggles  worth's  ghastly  doggerel  to  Milton ;  and, 
as  Lowell  says  with  biting  satire,  the  damnation  scene  was 
"the  solace  of  every  Puritan  fireside." 

3.    Another  phenomenon  connected  with  the  fanaticism  of 
Puritanism  in  its  worst  age  was  the  "Salem  witchcraft  mad 
ness'9  of  1(>92.     Throughout  the  seventeenth  cen-  The  Salem 
tury,  all  but  the  rarest  men  believed  unquestion-  witchcraft 
ingly  that  the  Devil  walked  the  earth  in  bodily  madness 
form   and  worked    his   will    sometimes    through   men   and 
women  who  had  sold  themselves  to  him.     These  suspected 
"witches,"    -usually  lonely,  scolding,  old  women,  --were 
objects  of  universal  fear  and  hate.     In  Switzerland,  Sweden, 
Germany,   France,   Great  Britain,   great  numbers   of  such 
wretches  were  put  to  death,  not  merely  by  ignorant  mobs, 
but  by  judicial  processes  before  the  most  enlightened  courts. 
In  England,  in  1603,  parliament  sanctioned  this  Common 
Law  process  by  a  statute  providing  the  penalty  of  death 


150  COLONIAL  LIFE 

for  those  who  should  have  "Dealings  with  evill  Spirits." 
(This  law  remained  on  the  English  statute  books  until  1735  ; 
and  in  1711  Jane  Wenham  was  convicted  under  it  of  "con 
versing  with  the  Devil  in  the  shape  of  a  cat.")  The  New 
England  codes  contained  similar  legislation.  In  Virginia, 
Grace  Sherwood  was  "swum  for  a  witch"  in  1705,  and,  in  as 
much  as  she  was  not  drowned,  the  jury  declared  her  guilty ; 
but  she  escaped  punishment  through  the  enlightened  doubts 
of  the  gentry  Justices.  In  the  more  progressive  Pennsyl 
vania,  the  most  that  could  be  secured  from  a  jury  was  a 
verdict  against  an  accused  woman  of  "guilty  of  haveing 
the  Common  fame  of  a  witch,  but  not  guilty  as  She 
stands  Indicted."  In  Maryland  a  woman  was  executed  on 
the  charge  of  witchcraft.  But  most  of  the  American  per 
secutions  occurred  in  New  England.  Connecticut  executed 
eleven  witches,  and  about  as  many  more  suffered  death  in 
Massachusetts  before  1690.  Then  came  the  frenzy  at 
Salem ;  and  within  a  few  months  twenty  were  executed,  while 
the  prisons  were  crammed  with  many  scores  more  of  the  ac 
cused.  The  clergy  took  a  leading  part  in  the  prosecutions ; 
and  the  hideous  follies  of  the  trials  are  almost  incredible. 
While  the  madness  lasted,  the  flimsiest  accusations  were 
equivalent  to  proof.  One  neat  woman  had  walked  some 
miles  over  bad  roads  without  getting  herself  muddy:  "I 
scorn  to  be  drabbled,"  she  said.  Plainly  she  must  have  been 
carried  by  the  Devil !  And  so  "  she  was  hanged  for  her 
cleanliness." 

Finally  the  common  sense  of  the  people  awoke,  and  the 
craze  passed  as  suddenly  as  it  had  come.  With  it  closed  all 
legal  prosecution  for  witchcraft  in  New  England,  rather 
earlier  than  in  the  rest  of  the  world ;  but  the  atrocities  of 
the  judicial  murders  crowded  into  those  few  months  stand 
a  lasting,  and  needed,  warning  against  popular  frenzy. 

4.  In  the  early  eighteenth  century  the  reaction  against  the 
witchcraft  delusion,  the  general  decline  of  Puritanism,  and 
the  influx  of  dissenting  Baptists  and  Episcopalians  into  New 
England  greatly  lowered  the  old  influence  of  the  Puritan 


SCHOOLS  151 

clergy  in  society  and  in  politics.  There  began,  too,  here 
and  there,  a  division  within  Puritan  churches,  foreshadow 
ing  the  later  Unitarian  movement.  This  loss  of  religious 
unity  brought  with  it  for  a  time  some  loosening  of  morals, 
and  part  of  the  people  ceased  to  have  any  close  relation  to 
the  church,  —  though  all  were  still  compelled  to  go  to  service 
each  Sunday. 

About  1735  a  reaction  from  the  religious  indifference  of 
the  day  manifested  itself  in  "the  Great  Awakening."     The 
powerful  preaching  of  Jonathan  Edwards  and  the 
impassioned  oratory  of  George  Whitfield,  one  of  Awaken- 
the  founders  of  English  Methodism,  caused  for  a  ing  "  of 
time  a  powerful  revival  movement  in  America  — 
characterized  by  the  features  that  later  movements  of  a  like 
kind  have  made  so  familiar. 

5.  Of  the  original  immigrants  below  the  gentry  class,  a 
large  proportion  could  not  write  their  names  ;  and  for  many 
years,  in  most  colonies  except  Massachusetts  and 
Connecticut,  there  were  few  schools.  Parents  were 
sometimes  exhorted  by  law  to  teach  their  children  them 
selves  ;  but  all  lacked  time,  and  many  lacked  knowledge. 
Mary  Williams,  wife  of  Roger  Williams,  signed  by  her 
"mark."  So,  too,  did  Priscilla  Alden  in  Plymouth;  and  in 
1636  the  authorities  of  that  colony  excused  themselves  to 
critics  in  England  for  having  as  yet  no  school,  on  the  plea 
of  poverty  and  the  pathetic  fact  that  "Divers  of  us  take 
such  paines  as  they  can  with  their  owne."  The  closing  years 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  in  particular,  were  a  period  of  de 
plorable  ignorance,  —  the  lowest  point  in  book  education  ever 
reached  in  America. 

With  the  dawn  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  its  greater 
prosperity,  conditions  began  to  improve.  In  Pennsylvania, 
parents  were  required,  under  penalty  of  heavy  fine,  to  see 
that  their  children  could  read,  and  several  free  elementary 
schools  were  established.  In  Maryland  the  statute  book 
provided  that  each  county  should  maintain  a  school,  with 
a  teacher  belonging  to  the  established  Episcopalian  Church ; 


152  COLONIAL  LIFE 

but,  since  most  of  the  inhabitants  were  Catholics  or  Protes 
tant  dissenters,  the  law  was  ineffective.  In  Virginia,  in 
1671,  Governor  Berkeley  had  boasted,  "I  thank  God  there 
are  no  free  schools  here  nor  printing,"  and  had  hoped  that 
for  a  hundred  years  the  province  might  remain  unvexed 
by  those  causes  of  "disobedience  and  heresy."  Half  a 
century  later  another  governor  of  Virginia  complained 
bitterly  that  chairmen  of  committees  in  the  Assembly 
could  not  write  legibly  or  spell  intelligibly.  But  by  1724, 
twelve  free  schools  had  been  established  by  endowments 
of  wealthy  planters,  and  some  twenty  more  private  schools 
were  flourishing.  South  of  that  colony  there  was  no  system 
of  schools  whatever.  Here  and  there,  however,  the  churches 
did  something  toward  teaching  children ;  and  of  course  the 
wealthy  planters  of  South  Carolina,  like  those  of  Virginia 
and  Maryland,  had  private  tutors  in  their  families,  and 
sent  their  sons  to  colleges  in  their  own  or  neighboring 
colonies  or  to  the  English  universities.  In  New  York,  the 
Dutch  churches  had  begun  free  schools  ;  but  at  a  later  time, 
because  of  the  connection  with  the  church,  these  almost 
disappeared.  Massachusetts  and  Connecticut  from  the  be 
ginning  had  a  remarkable  system  of  public  education 
(below) ;  and  the  other  New  England  colonies  gradually 
followed  in  their  footsteps. 

By  1760,  though  the  actual  years  of  schooling  for  a  child 
were  usually  few,  an  astonishingly  large  part  of  the  population 
could  read,  —  many  times  as  large,  probably,  as  in  any  other 
country  of  the  world  at  that  time;  but  there  was  still  dole 
fully  little  culture  of  a  much  higher  quality.  Between  1700 
and  1770  several  small  colleges  were  established,  in  addition 
to  the  older  Harvard  (page  155)  and  William  and  Mary,  in 
Virginia,  1696  :  Yale,  1701 ;  Princeton,  in  New  Jersey,  1746 ; 
King's,  in  New  York  (now  Columbia),  1754  ;  the  University 
of  Pennsylvania  (through  the  efforts  of  Franklin),  1755  ;  and 
Brown,  in  Rhode  Island,  1764.  South  of  Virginia  there  was 
no  educational  institution  of  rank ;  and  none  of  the  colleges 
just  named  equaled  a  good  high  school  of  to-day  in  cur 
riculum,  or  equipment,  or  faculty.  With  a  few  notable 


THE  PURITAN  SCHOOLS  153 

exceptions,  the  only  private  libraries  of  consequence  were 
the  theological  collections  of  the  clergy.  In  1698  the  South 
Carolina  Assembly  founded  at  Charleston  the  first  public 
library  in  America,  and  about  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century  Franklin  started  a  subscription  library  at  Phila 
delphia.  In  1700  there  was  no  American  newspaper.  The 
Boston  News  Letter  appeared  in  1704,  and,  by  1725,  eight 
or  nine  weeklies  were  being  published,  pretty  well  dis 
tributed  through  the  colonies.  Ten  years  later,  Boston 
alone  had  five  weeklies. 

It  should  be  noted  clearly  that  in  New  England  such 
education  as  there  was,  was  open  to  all  on  fairly  equal  terms ; 
while  south  of  Maryland,  education,  high  or  low,  was 
practically  only  for  the  few.  On  the  other  hand,  the  great 
planters  of  the  south  were  by  all  odds  the  best  educated 
men  in  America,  acquainted  with  literature,  history,  politics, 
and  law,  and  with  such  science  as  the  age  had,  and  more  or 
less  in  touch  with  European  culture  and  habits  of  thought. 

The  schools  of  early  Massachusetts  and  Connecticut  demand  a 
longer  treatment.  Here  was  the  splendor  of  Puritanism,  — - 
a  glory  that  easily  makes  us  forget  the  shame  of  the  Quaker 
and  witchcraft  persecutions.  The  public  school  system 
of  America  to-day,  in  its  essential  features,  is  the  gift  of  the 
Puritans. 

In  Massachusetts,  private  schools  were  found  in  some 
villages  from  the  building  of  the  first  rude  cabins.  In  1635, 
five  years  after  Winthrop's  landing,  a  Boston  town  meeting 
adopted  one  of  these  private  schools  as  a  town  school,  ap 
pointing  a  schoolmaster  and  voting  from  the  poor  town 
treasury  fifty  pounds  (some  twelve  hundred  dollars  to-day) 
for  its  support.  So  Salem  in  1637,  and  Cambridge  in  1642. 
Such  schools  were  a  new  growth  in  this  New  World,  suggested, 
no  doubt,  by  the  parish  schools  of  England,  but  more 
generously  planned  for  the  whole  public,  by  public  authority. 
They  were  free  in  the  sense  of  being  open  to  all.  Commonly 
they  were  supported  in  part  by  taxation,  but  tuition  was 
charged  also  to  help  cover  the  cost. 


154 


COLONIAL  LIFE 


So  far,  the  movement  and  control  had  been  local.  Next 
the  commonwealth  stepped  in  to  adopt  these  town  schools 
and  weld  them  into  a  state  system.  This  step,  too,  was 
taken  by  the  men  of  the  first  generation,  —  pioneers,  still 
struggling  for  existence  on  the  fringe  of  a  strange  and  savage 
continent.  In  1642,  "  in  consideration  of  the  neglect  of  many 

parents  to  train  up  their 
children  in  learning  and 
labor,  which  might  be 
profitable  to  the  Common 
wealth,"  the  General 


Titnt  cuts  down  all 
Both  great  and  {null 


David  Uck  his 
Life. 


in  the  ?c 
God'*  Voice  cb:y. 


Xerxes  the  great  di3 

die, 
And  fo  rcwlt  you  S,'  I- 


forward  jilps 
Death  focnclt  nip*-. 


cljrcb  the  Tree 
torJ  to  f:«, 


Court  passed  a  Com 
pulsory  Education  Act 
of  the  most  stringent 
character.  This  law 
even  authorized  town 
authorities  to  take  chil 
dren  from  their  parents, 
if  needful,  to  secure 
their  schooling.1 

This  Act  assumed  that 
schools  were  accessible 
in  each  town.  Five 
years  later,  the  com 
monwealth  required 
each  village  to  main 
tain  at  least  a  primary 
school,  and  each  town 
of  a  hundred  houses 
to  keep  up  a  grammar 
school  (Latin  school).  This  great  law  of  1647  (written 
with  solemn  eloquence,  as  if,  in  some  dim  way,  the 
pioneers  felt  the  grandeur  of  their  deed)  remains  one  of 
the  mighty  factors  that  have  influenced  the  destiny  of 
the  world.  James  Russell  Lowell,  after  a  delightful  remi- 

1  The  Puritan  purpose  was  good  citizenship,  as  well  as  religious  training.  The 
preamble  of  the  similar  Connecticut  Act  of  1644  runs :  "For  as  much  as  the  good 
education  of  children  is  of  singular  behoof  and  benefit  to  any  Commonwealth,"  etc. 


A  PAGE  FROM  THE  EARLIEST  KNOWN  EDITION 
OF  THE  NEW  ENGLAND  PRIMER,  the  first 
New  England  textbook  not  made  up  wholly 
of  extracts  from  the  Bible.  The  first  edition 
appeared  about  1680,  and  the  book  held  its 
place  until  long  after  the  Revolution. 


THE  PURITAN  SCHOOLS 


155 


NO  *  V  !  lay  me  down  to 
I  pray  the  Lord  rny  foul  to  keep. 
If  !  fhould  die  before  I  wake, 
1  pray  the  Lord  my  foul  to  take. 
Good  children  muft 
'Fear  God  all  day  i  Love  Ch rift 

Parents  obey,  In  fecrtt 

Nc  fa  ife  /  king  fay ,  Mtnd  lit 

By  twjinjlray,  Make  no 

in  dohit 

Awake,  arife,  behold  tj 
Thy  life,  a  leaf,  thy  breath,  a  blaO  ; 
A  i  night  lie  down  prepared  to  have 
Tly  ileep,  thy  death,  rby  bed,  thy 


niscence  of  the  New  England  crossroads  schoolhouse,  con 
tinues  :  - 

"Now  this  little  building,  and  others  like  it,  were  an  original 
kind  of  fortification  invented  by  the  founders  of  New  England. 
These  are  the  martello-towers  that  protect  our  coast.  This  was 
the  great  discovery  of  our  Puritan  forefathers.  They  were  the 
first  lawgivers  who  saw 
clearly,  and  enforced 
practically,  the  simple 
moral  and  political 
truth,  that  knowledge 
was  not  an  alms,  to 
be  dependent  on  the 
chance  charity  of  pri 
vate  men  or  the  pre 
carious  pittance  of  a 
trust-fund,  but  a 
sacred  debt  which  the 
commonwealth  owed  to 
every  one  of  its  chil 
dren.  The  opening  of 
the  first  grammar- 
school  was  the  open 
ing  of  the  first  trench 
against  monopoly  in 
state  and  church ;  the  first  row  of  pot-hooks  and  trammels  which 
the  little  Shearjashubs  and  Elkanahs  blotted  and  blubbered  across 
their  copy  books  was  the  preamble  to  the  Declaration  of  Independence." 

The  Puritan  plan  embraced  a  complete  state  system  from 
primary  school  to  "university."  In  1636,  a  year  after  Boston 
established  the  first  town  school,  Massachusetts  The  Puritan 
established  her  "state  university"  (as  Harvard  ideal 
truly  was  in  the  seventeenth  century,  though  it  was  named 
for  the  good  clergyman  who  afterward  endowed  it  with  his 
library).  Then  the  law  of  1647  joined  primary  school  and 
university  in  one  whole,  providing  that  each  village  of  a 
hundred  householders  must  maintain  a  "grammar-school, 
with  a  teacher  able  to  instruct  youth  so  as  they  may  be 
fitted  for  the  University ." 


A  PAGE  FROM  THE  PAISLEY  EDITION  OF  THE  NEW 
ENGLAND  PRIMER,  1781.  This  "evening  prayer" 
appeared  first  in  the  second  edition  of  the  Primer, 
nearly  a  hundred  years  earlier. 


156  COLONIAL  LIFE 

True,  this  noble  attempt  was  too  ambitious.  Grinding 
poverty  made  it  impossible  for  frontier  villages  of  four  or 
five  hundred  people  to  maintain  a  Latin  school ;  and, 
despite  heavy  fines  upon  the  towns  that  failed  to  do  so, 
such  schools  gradually  gave  way,  except  in  one  or  two  large 
places,  to  a  few  private  academies,  —  which  came  to  repre 
sent  the  later  New  England  idea  in  secondary  education. 
Thus,  the  state  system  was  broken  at  the  middle,  and  both 
extremities  suffered.  The  universities  ceased  finally  to  be 
state  institutions ;  and  the  primary  schools  deteriorated 
sadly,  especially  in  the  period  of  Puritan  decline  about 
1700,  with  meager  courses,  short  terms,  and  low  aims. 
But  with  all  its  temporary  failure  in  its  first  home,  the 
Puritan  ideal  of  a  state  system  of  public  instruction  was 
never  wholly  lost  sight  of  in  America. 

6.  Population  in  1775  numbered  2,500,000.  One  third 
had  been  born  in  Europe.  The  English  nationality  was 
Population  dominant  in  every  colony.  In  the  Carolinas  the 
in  1775  Huguenots  were  numerous,  and  in  South  Carolina 
and  Georgia  there  was  a  large  German  population.  South 
Carolina,  too,  had  many  Highland  Scots.  These  came  to 
America  after  the  defeat  at  Culloden  and  the  breaking  up 
of  the  clan  system.  Curiously  enough,  they  were  Tories  in 
the  Revolution.  The  same  conservative  and  loyal  temper 
which  had  made  them  cling  to  the  e"xiled  House  of  Stuart 
in  England  made  them  in  America  adherents  of  King  George. 
The  largest  non-English  elements  were  found  in  the  Middle 
colonies :  Dutch  and  Germans  in  New  York ;  Dutch  and 
Swedes  in  Delaware ;  Germans,  Welsh,  and  Celtic  Irish  in 
Pennsylvania.  In  the  Carolinas,  Virginia,  and  Pennsylvania, 
the  back  counties  were  settled  mainly  by  the  Scotch-Irish. 

In  1619,  while  Virginia  was  still  the  only  English  colony 
on  the  continent,  she  received  her  first  importation  of  Negro 
Negro  slaves,  twenty  in  number.  As  late  as  1648,  there 

slavery  were  on]y  300  in  her  population  of  15,000.  By 
1670  the  number  had  risen  to  2000  (out  of  a  total  of  40,000). 
A  century  later  nearly  half  her  population  was  Black,  while  in 


FORCED  LABOR  157 

South  Carolina,  more  than  half  was  Black.  In  Maryland  the 
proportion  was  about  a  fourth,  and  in  New  York  a  seventh. 
Negroes  made  a  fifth  of  the  whole  population,  and  half  of 
that  south  of  Mason  and  Dixon's  line.  That  line  divided 
the  population  of  the  country  into  two  nearly  equal  halves ; 
but  two  thirds  of  the  Whites  were  found  on  the  north 
side  of  it. 

7.  Labor  was  supplied,  in  the  main,  by  free  men  in  New 
England,  by  indentured  White  servants  in  the  Middle  colonies, 
and  by  Negro  slaves  in  the  South.  The  White  Labor  in 
bondservants  were  of  several  classes.  The  man  the  different 
who  sold  himself  into  service  for  four  or  seven  s 
years  in  return  for  passage  money  for  himself  or  his  family, 
was  known  as  a  " redernptioner,"  or  "free- wilier."  The 
German  immigrants  of  the  eighteenth  century,  like  many 
of  the  English  settlers,  came  in  this  way.  Many  White 
convicts  were  transported  from  England  and  condemned 
to  a  term  of  service,  —  seven  or  fourteen  years.  After 
1717,  this  class  increased  rapidly  in  number,  averaging 
1000  a  year  for  the  fifty  years  preceding  the  Revolution. 
Classed  with  the  convicts  in  law,  but  very  different  from 
them  in  character,  were  the  political  "convicts,"  -  prisoners 
sold  into  service  by  the  victorious  parties,  each  in  turn, 
during  the  English  civil  wars  of  the  seventeenth  century. 
Often  the  convicts  were  not  hardened  criminals,  but  rather 
the  victims  of  the  atrocious  laws  in  England  at  the  time. 
Many  were  intelligent  and  capable.  In  Maryland  in  1773 
a  majority  of  all  tutors  and  teachers  are  said  to  have  been 
convicts.  Some  of  them  (like  a  much  larger  part  of  the 
redemptioners) ,  after  their  term  of  service,  became 
prosperous  and  useful  citizens.  Even  in  aristocratic  Vir 
ginia,  a  transported  thief  rose  to  become  attorney -general. 
Charles  Thomson,  Secretary  of  the  Continental  Congress, 
was  a  "redemptioner,"  as  was  also  one  of  the  signers  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence.  So,  too,  was  Zenger  (page 
143) ;  and  many  members  of  colonial  legislatures  could  be 
named  who  came  to  America  as  "bond  servants." 


158  COLONIAL  LIFE 

The  condition  of  the  White  servants  was  often  a  deplorable 
servitude.  The  colonial  press,  up  to  the  Revolution,  teems 
White  with  advertisements  offering  rewards  for  runaway 

"  servants  "  servants.  More  than  seventy  such  notices  are 
contained  in  the  "Newspaper  Extracts"  published  in  the 
New  Jersey  Archives  for  that  little  colony,  for  only  the  two 
years,  1771,  1772.  This  must  have  meant  one  runaway 
servant  to  each  1000  of  the  population ;  and  probably  not 
half  the  runaways  are  in  those  advertisements.  One  run 
away  is  described  as  "born  in  the  colony,"  about  50  years 


HTHIS  Day   run  -away   from  his  Mailer 

dnderhn  of-AVfr-M^/ftaW,  a  white  Man  Servant,  a- 


bout  '6  Years  of  Age,  with  fhort  browtiifh  ftrait  Hair,  he  is  pretty 
clear  fkin'd,  fomtthing  freckled,  and  I  think,  on  his  lefc  Foot  the  top  of 
cne  of  his  middle  Toes  is  cut  off:  He  carried  off  with  him  a  ftriped 
v.*orfted  and  wool  jacket,  two  tow  and  linnet)  Shirts,  one  pair  of  cow 
tnd  Hnnen  Trowfers,  and  one  pair  of  tow  and  linnen  ilriped  Breeches,, 
two  pair  of  iightifh  coloured  blue  Ht>ict  and  a  new  Callur  Hat  :  His 
Name  ii  Florence  Syfat/Ur  al'us  AW  Cartfr  ;  Whcfoever  fha.ll  apprehend 
and  rake  up  fatd  Fellow,  and  him  deliver  to  his  abovefaid  Mailer  in 
Nt&-M£rb!ebtad9  in  the  Cour>ry  of  York,  or  to  Capt.  Jcjbua  B<WV  in 
Taitituib,  ftiall  have  FOUR  POUNDS,  lawful  Money,  as  *  Reward, 
and  all  neceifary  Charges  paid. 

Auvuft  2  c,  .   t  7  ^  ;  .  ••  Abrnbam 


ADVERTISEMENT  FROM  THE  Boston  Weekly  News  Letter,  September  18,  1755.  A 
photograph  of  the  original,  which  is  in  the  collection  of  the  Massachusetts 
Historical  Society. 

old,  and  as  having  "served  in  the  last  war  [French  War]  and  a 
carpenter  by  trade."  There  are  still  more  significant  and 
gruesome  notices  by  jailers,  proving  that  it  was  customary 
to  arrest  a  vagrant  working-man  on  suspicion  of  his  being 
a  runaway,  and  then,  if  no  master  appeared  to  claim  him 
within  a  fixed  time,  to  sell  him  into  servitude  for  his  jail 
fees!  Some  of  these  White  "servants"  are  described  as 
fitted  with  "iron  collars."  American  law  and  custom  per 
mitted  these  barbarities  upon  the  helpless  poor  in  the  days 
of  Lexington  and  Bunker  Hill. 

Negroes  were  not  numerous  enough  in  the  North  (except 


THE  INDUSTRIES  OF  THE  NORTH  AND  SOUTH     159 

perhaps  in  New  York)  to  affect  the  life  of  the  people  seriously. 
In  the  South,  Black  slavery  degraded  the  condition  of  the 
indentured  White  "servant,"  and  —  more  serious  The  "  Black 
still  —  made  it  difficult  for  him  to  find  profit-  laws " 
able  and  honorable  work  when  his  term  of  service  had  ex 
pired.  As  early  as  1735,  the  result  appeared  in  the  presence 
of  the  class  known  later  as  "Poor  Whites."  In  that  year 
Colonel  William  Byrd  declared  that  these  "Ethiopians" 
"blow  up  the  Pride  and  ruin  the  Industry  of  our  White 
People,  who,  seeing  a  Rank  of  poor  Creatures  below 
them,  detest  work  for  Fear  it  should  make  them  look 
like  Slaves."  In  Virginia,  as  a  rule,  slavery  was  mild ; 
while  in  South  Carolina  and  Georgia  it  was  excessively 
brutal.  In  those  two  colonies  the  rice  plantations  called 
constantly  for  fresh  importations  of  savage  Africans.  In  all 
colonies  with  a  large  slave  population  there  were  cruel 
"Black  laws,"  to  keep  slaves  from  running  away  ;  and  every 
where  the  general  attitude  of  the  law  toward  the  slave  was 
one  of  indifference  to  human  rights.  The  worst  phases  of 
the  law  were  not  often  appealed  to  in  actual  practice;  but 
in  New  York  in  1741,  during  a  panic  due  to  a  supposed  plot 
for  a  slave  insurrection,  fourteen  negroes  were  burned  at 
the  stake  (with  legal  formalities)  and  a  still  larger  number 
were  hanged,  —  all  on  very  flimsy  evidence. 

8.    Dependence  upon  slave  labor  helped  to  keep  industry 
purely  agricultural  in  the  South,  since  the  slave  was  unfit  for 
manufactures  or  for  the  work  of  a  skilled  artisan. 
Tobacco  raising  was  the  chief  employment  in  the  j^str™ 
tidewater    districts  of    Maryland,    Virginia,   and  agricultural 
North    Carolina,   and    rice    cultivation    in    South 
Carolina  and  Georgia.     These  tidewater   staples 
were  grown  mainly  on  large  plantations;  and  the  Virginia 
planter  in  particular  sought  to  add  estate  to  estate,  and 
to  keep  land  in  his  family  by  rigid  laws  of  entail.1     Be 
tween  this  class  of  large  planters  and  the  "Poor  WTiites," 

1  "Entail"  is  a  legal  arrangement  to  prevent  land  from  being  sold  or  willed  away 
out  of  a  fixed  line  of  inheritance.     Entail  is  found  only  with  primogeniture. 


160 


COLONIAL  LIFE 


however,  there  was  always  a  considerable  number  of  small 
farmers  in  Virginia ;  and  in  North  Carolina  this  element 
was  the  main  one.  The  western  counties  of  all  the  colonies 
were  occupied  exclusively  in  small  farming. 

In  the  Middle  colonies,  foodstuffs  were  raised  on  a  large 
scale.  These  colonies  exported  to  the  West  Indies  (both 
The  Middle  English  and  French)  most  of  the  bread,  flour, 

colonies:        beer,  beef,  and  pork  used  there.     In  these  col- 
foodstuffs  .  .  .  £          r* 
andmanu-     onies,    too,    immigrant    artisans    trom   Germany 

factures         early    introduced    rudimentary    manufactures,  — 
linen,  pottery,  glassware,  hats,  shoes,  furniture. 


AN  ENGLISH  COLONIAL-BUILT  SCHOONER,  The  Baltic,  coming  out  of  St.  Eustatia, 
Dutch  West  Indies,  November,  1765.  From  a  water  color  in  the  Essex  In 
stitute,  Salem,  Mass. 

In    New    England,    occupations    were    still    more    varied. 

The  majority  of  the  people  still  lived  in  agricultural  villages 
and  tilled  small  farms ;  but  they  could  not  wring 
all  their  subsistence  from  the  scanty  soil.  Each 
farmer  was  a  "  Jack-at-all-trades."  In  the  winter 
days,  he  hewed  out  clapboards,  staves,  and 

shingles ;  and  in  the  long  evenings,  at  a  little  forge  in  the 


The  varied 
occupations 
of  New 
England 


TRADE  AND  INDUSTRY 


161 


fireplace,  he  hammered  out  nails  and  tacks  from  a  bar  of 
iron.  Even  in  the  towns,  all  but  the  merchant  and 
professional  classes  had  to  be  able  to  turn  their  hands 
to  a  variety  of  work  if  they  would  prosper.  Mr.  Weeden 
tells  of  a  certain  John  Marshall,  a  constable  at  Braintree, 
and  a  commissioned  officer  in  the  militia  company  there, 
who  "farmed  a  little,  made  laths  in  the  winter,  was  painter, 
carpenter,  and  messenger,  and  burned  bricks,  bought  and 
sold  live-stock,"  and  who  managed  by  these  varied  industries 
to  earn  about  four  shillings  a  day.  Manufactures  also  had 
appeared,  though,  with  one  exception,  on  a  smaller  scale 
than  in  Pennsylvania.  The  exception  was  shipbuilding. 
New  England  built 
ships  for  both  American 
and  English  markets. 
With  her  splendid  tim 
ber  at  the  water's  edge, 
Massachusetts  could 
launch  an  oak  ship  at 
about  half  the  cost  of  a 
like  vessel  in  an  English 
shipyard;  and  in  1775 
at  least  a  third  of  the 
vessels  flying  the  Eng 
lish  flag  had  been  built 
in  America.  The  swift- 
sailing  schooner,  per 
fected  in  this  period,  was  peculiarly  a  New  England  creation. 
Another  leading  industry  was  the  fisheries,  —  cod,  mackerel, 
and  finally,  as  these  bred  an  unrivaled  race  of  seamen,  the 
whale  fisheries  of  both  polar  oceans. 

New  England,  too,  was  preeminently  the  commercial  section. 
Her  schooners — often  from  villages  like  Gloucester — carried 
almost  all  the  trade  between  colony  and  colony  for 
the  whole  seaboard.  And  in  centers  like  Boston 
and  Newport  (as  also  in  New  York  and  Philadelphia  in  the 
Middle  colonies)  there  grew  up  an  aristocracy  of  great  mer 
chants  (in  the  old  English  meaning  of  the  word),  with  ware- 


AN  AMERICAN   MERCHANT  SHIP,  of  the  type 
known  as  "  tall-masted  "  or  "  deep-sea  going." 


Commerce 


162 


COLONIAL  LIFE 


houses,  offices,  wharves,  and  fleets  of  tall-masted  ships  on 
every  sea,  and  agents  or  correspondents  in  all  parts  of  the 
Circles  of  world.  One  favorite  circle  of  exchange  was  the 
exchange  « three-cornered  route":  (1)  New  England  mer 
chants  carried  rum  to  Africa,  to  exchange  for  Negro  slaves ; 
(2)  these  they  sold  largely  in  the  West  Indies  for  sugar ;  and 

(3)  this  sugar  they 
brought  home,  to  make 
into  more  rum  with 
which  to  buy  more 
slaves. 

All    the    colonies   im- 
, .  ported  their  better  grades 

equal  t&  money  &JlifttUBG,acc.ordins3rly-«S  <?     i    .1  •  i      » >     ±1 

accepted  ijytkfeJ&eftteerankRfteel^/JW  °*   clothing  and  ot  Other 

lUlorilnate toKim  mallFuiUck  »avrm««rt5  manufactures  from  Eng 

land.  The  southern 
planters  dealt  through 
agents  in  England,  to 
whom  they  consigned 
their  tobacco.  For  the 
other  colonies  the  circle 
of  exchange  was  a  trifle 
more  complex.  They 
imported  from  England 
more  than  they  sold 
there.  But  they  sold  to 
the  West  Indies  more 
than  they  bought,  re 
ceiving  the  balance  in  money, —  mainly  French  and  Spanish 
coins,  —  with  which  they  settled  the  balances  against  them 
in  England. 

This  drain  of  coin  to  England  was  incessant  through  the 
whole  colonial  period.  No  coins  were  struck  in  the  colonies, 
Exchange  of  course,  except  for  the  "Pine-Tree  Shilling,"  of 
by  barter  Massachusetts  ;  and  there  were  no  banks,  to  issue 
currency.  Trade  was  largely  carried  on,  not  by  money,  but 
by  barter ;  and  in  all  colonies,  especially  in  the  first  century, 
debts  were  settled  and  taxes  were  paid  in  produce  ("pay")  at 


MASSACHUSETTS  PAPER  MONEY  OF  1690.  From 
a  bill  in  the  collection  of  the  Massachusetts 
Historical  Society. 


THE  THREE  SECTIONS  163 

a  rate  for  each  kind  fixed  by  law.  Wages  and  salaries  were 
paid  in  the  same  way.  The  following  record  of  a  vote  by 
a  Plymouth  town  meeting  in  1667  hints  at  the  difficulty 
of  getting  "good  pay"  in  such  a  method:  "That  the 
sume  of  fifty  pounds  shalbee  alowed  to  Mr.  Cotton  [the 
minister]  for  this  present  yeare  (and  his  wood).  To  be 
raised  by  way  of  Rate  [assessed  as  a  tax]  to  be  payed  in  such 
as  god  gives,  ever  onely  to  be  minded  that  a  considerable  parte 
of  it  shalbee  payed  in  the  best  pay."  And  toward  the  end 
of  the  colonial  period  a  student  at  Harvard,  afterward 
president  there,  paid  his  tuition  with  "an  old  cow." 

In  the  lack  of  a  "circulating  medium"  (especially  during 
the  French  and  Indian  Wars,  when  the  governments  needed 
funds),  nearly  all  the  colonies  at  some  time  after  Coioniai 
1690  issued  paper  money.     The  matter  was  always  paper 
badly  handled,  and  great  depreciation  followed, 
with  serious  confusion  to   business.     In  consequence,   the 
English  government  finally  forbade  any  more  such  issues,  to 
the  great  vexation  of  many  people  in  America. 

9.    The  deep-lying  differences  between  the  three  great 
sections  of   colonial   America  were   suggested   roughly   by 
certain  significant  external   appearances  of  their  Quter 
homes.      The  South  had  few  towns,  —  none  south  symbols 
of  Baltimore,   except  Charleston.     The  ordinary  ofth* 
planters  lived  in  white  frame  houses,  with  a  long 
porch  in  front,  set  at  intervals  of  a  mile  or  more  apart, 
often   in   parklike   grounds.      The   small   class   of   wealthy 
planters  lived  on  vaster  estates,  separated  from  neighbors 
by  grander  distances.     In  any  case,  a  true  "planta-  jheSouth- 
tion,"  like  a  medieval  manor,  was  a  unit,  apart  from  empianta- 
the  rest  of  the  world.     The  planter's  importations  * 
from  Europe  were  unladen  at  his  own  wharf,  and  his  tobacco 
(with  that  of  the  neighboring   small   farmers)    was   taken 
aboard.     Leather  was  tanned ;   clothing  for  the  hundreds  of 
slaves  was  made ;  blacksmithing,  woodworking,  and  other  in 
dustries  needful  to  the  little  community,  were  carried  on, 
sometimes  under  the  direction  of  White  foremen.     The  mis- 


164 


COLONIAL  LIFE 


tress  supervised  weaving  and  spinning,  the  master  rode  over 
his  fields  to  supervise  cultivation.  The  two  usually  cared  for 
the  slaves,  looked  after  them  in  sickness,  allotted  their  daily 
rations,  arranged  "marriages."  The  central  point  in  the 
plantation  was  the  imposing  mansion  of  brick  or  wood, 
with  broad  verandahs,  surrounded  by  houses  for  foremen  and 
other  assistants  and  by  a  number  of  offices.  At  a  distance 
was  a  little  village  of  Negro  cabins.  The  chief  bond  with 


MOUNT  VERNON,  the  home  of  George  Washington,  and  a  typical  residence  of  a 
Southern  planter.     From  a  photograph. 

the  outer  world  was  the  lavish  hospitality  between  the 
planter's  family  and  neighbors  of  like  position  scattered 
over  many  miles  of  territory. 

A  wholly  different  society  was  symbolized  by  even  the  ex 
terior  of  New  England.  Here  the  small  farms  were  sub- 
The  New  divided  into  petty  fields  by  stone  fences,  gathered 
England  from  the  soil.  All  habitations  clustered  in  ham 
lets,  which  dotted  the  landscape.  Each  was 
marked  by  the  spire  of  a  white  church,  and,  seen  closer, 
each  was  made  up  of  a  few  wide,  elm-shaded  streets,  with 


THE  THREE  SECTIONS 


165 


rows  of  small  but  decent  houses  in  roomy  yards.  And  yet, 
even  in  New  England,  people  were  expected  to  dress  accord 
ing  to  their  social  rank;  and  inferiors  were  made  to  "keep 
their  places,"  in  churches  and  public  inns.  The  clubroom 
and  the  inn  parlor  were  for  the  gentry  only  :  the  tradesman 
and  his  wife  found  places  in  the  kitchen  or  taproom. 

The  symbol  of  the  West  was  neither  the  broad-verandahed 
country  mansion  nor  the  town  of  elm-shaded  streets  cluster- 


Photograph  by  Elmer  L.  Foole 

LEXINGTON  GREEN,  showing  part  of  a  New  England  village,  with  typical  homes 
of  the  better  sort.  The  deeper  interest  of  this  picture  is  explained  on  page 
167,  at  the  end  of  the  chapter. 

ing  about  a  white  spire.  Rather  it  was  a  stockaded  fort,  with 
scattered  log  cabins,  in  their  stump-dotted  clearings  spotting 
the  forest  for  miles  about  it.  As  early  as  1660,  in  The  West- 
Virginia,  there  was  a  difference  noticeable  between  em  stockade 
eastern  and  western  counties.  The  great  planters  were  not 
much  attracted  to  the  ruder  frontier,  and  so  the  western  dis 
tricts  were  left  almost  wholly  to  a  democratic  society  of  small 
farmers.  So  in  New  England,  by  1700,  good  land  was  scarce 
in  settled  districts,  and  town  "free-holders"  were  less  and 


166 


COLONIAL  LIFE 


less  willing  to  admit  "cottagers"  to  rights  of  pasture  on  the 
town  "commons."  Accordingly,  the  more  enterprising  and 
daring  of  the  landless  men  began  to  strike  out  for  themselves 
in  new  settlements  far  up  the  rivers,  —  usually  at  some 
point  where  good  water  power  suggested  a  mill  site,  and 
always  where  land  could  be  taken  almost  at  will.  Long 
before  the  Revolution,  men  of  New  England  birth  had 
begun  a  newer  and  more  democratic  New  England  in  the 
pine  woods  up  the  Kennebec  and  Androscoggin  in  Maine, 
along  the  upper  course  of  the  Merrimac  in  New  Hampshire, 

in  the  Green  Mountains 
of  what  was  one  day  to 
be  "Vermont,"  and  in 
the  Berkshiresof  Massa 
chusetts  —  as  about 
Pittsfield  on  the  upper 
Housatonic. 

Meanwhile,  farther 
west,  beyond  the  first 
mountain  range,  in  the 
long  valleys  from 

"BOONE'S    FORT,"    one   of    the   early  western  ^  •       j.       XT          A7      1 

"stations."     Cf.   page   244.     From    a   print  Georgia    to    New    York, 

based  on  contemporary  accounts.    The  struc-  the      Scotch-Irish      Were 

ture  was  250  feet  by  125,  with  heavy  gates  u     'Mi'          tV|^    trim    Wp«t 

at  the  middle  of  the  long  sides.  building    tne 

(page  135).     No  rivers 

made  visits  and  trade  possible  for  them  with  the  older  settled 
area  —  divided  from  it  as  they  were  by  the  bristling  Blue 
Ridge;  and  so  here  difference  of  race  and  lack  of  inter 
course  added  to  the  earlier  distinction  between  eastern  and 
western  districts. 

But  in  all  the  western  regions,  English  or  German  or 
Irish,  east  or  west  of  the  Blue  Ridge,  compared  with  the 
The  de-  tidewater  districts,  there  was  little  aristocracy, 
mocracy  There  were  few  large  proprietors,  few  gentry, 
of  the  West  |ew  servantS)  almost  no  slaves.  The  gold  lace 
and  powdered  wigs  of  the  older  sections  were  rarely  seen, 
and  only  on  some  official  from  the  eastern  counties.  Nearly 
every  male  settler  was  a  free  proprietor  working  his  own 


THE  THREE  SECTIONS  167 

land  with  his  own  hands,  and  eating  and  wearing  the  prod 
ucts  of  his  own  labor.  There  were  fewer  schools  and 
fewer  clergy  than  in  the  older  region ;  and  the  hard  condi 
tions  of  life  in  the  wilderness,  and  constant  touch  with 
savage  enemies,  developed  a  rudeness  of  manner  and  a 
ruthless  temper.  Both  for  good  and  bad,  this  new  frontier 
had  already  begun  in  its  own  way  to  Americanize  the  old 
Europeanized  frontier  of  the  tidewater  districts. 

N.B.  Lexington  Green,  shown  on  page  165,  has  of  course  its 
deepest  interest  as  the  scene  of  the  first  bloodshed  of  the  American 
Revolution.  On  their  way  to  Concord  (page  208),  the  British 
regulars  found  a  few  Minute  Men  drawn  up  here  in  front  of  the 
Meeting  House  (from  the  site  of  which  this  photograph  is  taken). 
Inspired  by  the  spirit  of  free  Americans  and  by  the  sturdy  heroism 
of  Captain  Parker's  exhortation  (note  his  words  upon  the  Me 
morial  stone),  this  little  band  stood  its  ground  to  a  man,  despite 
the  British  officer's  order,  "  Disperse,  you  rebels,"  —  and  received 
a  deadly  volley.  One  of  those  who  fell,  the  patriot  Harrington, 
mortally  wounded,  dragged  himself  to  his  home  (the  house 
directly  opposite),  but  died  upon  its  steps  while  his  wife  was  try 
ing  to  assist  him.  Forever  may  men  standing  upon  their  rights 
but  threatened  by  blustering  tyranny  remember  the  fine  consti 
tutional  ring  of  Captain  Parker's  words,  —  "  Stand  your  ground  ! 
Don't  fire  unless  fired  upon.  But  if  they  mean  to  have  a  war, 
let  it  begin  here." 


PAET  III  —  SEPARATION  FEOM  ENGLAND 
CHAPTER   IX 

THE    CAUSES 
I.   HOW  THE  FRENCH   WARS  PREPARED   THE   WAY 

THE  seventy  years  of  Intercolonial  wars  closed  in  1763. 
They  had  won  for  England  a  new  colonial  empire ;  but  soon 
it  became  plain  that  they  had  also  put  at  hazard  her  old 
empire.  They  had  prepared  her  colonies  in  North  America 
for  union,  removed  the  need  of  her  protection,  and  brought 
her  to  tax  them. 

1.  The  common  danger,  during  the  long  wars,  had  done 
much  to  bring  the  colonies  together.     In  1698  William  Penn 
Projects  for    drew  UP  a  scheme  for  colonial  federation,  and  in 
colonial         1754,  at  a  council  of  governors  at  Albany,  Franklin 

presented  his  famous  plan  for  union.  Between 
these  dates  seven  other  like  plans  appeared,  and  leaders  from 
distant  colonies  came  together  to  consider  some  of  them. 
True,  the  great  majority  of  colonists  everywhere  ignored  or 
rejected  all  such  proposals ;  but  the  discussion  was  to  bear 
fruit  when  a  stronger  motive  for  union  should  arise.  And 
without  union,  resistance  to  England  would  have  been  im 
possible. 

2.  The  conquest  of  Canada  removed  the  most  pressing 
need    of    English    protection.     Far-sighted    men    had    long 
English         seen  that  the  colonies  might  be  less  true  to  the 
conquest        mother    country   if    the    dreaded    French    power 

should  cease  to  threaten  them  from  the  north.  In 
1748  Peter  Kalm,  a  shrewd  Swedish  traveler,  wrote  :  "It  is 
of  great  advantage  to  the  crown  of  England  that  the  colonies 

168 


HOW  THE  FRENCH  WARS  PREPARED  THE  WAY  169 

are  near  a  country  under  the  government  of  the  French. 
.  .  .  There  is  reason  to  believe  the  king  was  never  earnest  in 
his  attempts  to  expel  the  French.  ...  I  have  been  publickly 
told,  not  only  by  native  Americans,  but  by  English  emi 
grants,  that  within  thirty  or  fifty  years  the  English  colonies 
may  constitute  a  separate  state,  wholly  independent  of  Eng 
land.  .  .  .  These  dangerous  neighbors  are  the  reason  why 
the  love  of  the  colonies  for  their  metropolis  does  not  utterly 
decline." 

Probably,  in  the  italicized  sentence,  Kalm  had  in  mind 
the  fact  that,  in  King  George's  War  (then  just  closed),  the 
English  ministry  had  refused  to  cooperate  with  the  colonies 
for  the  conquest  of  Canada.  In  the  "French  and  Indian" 
War  Pitt  threw  aside  this  ignoble  caution,  and  brought 
about  the  conquest.  Even  then,  some  Englishmen  urged 
that  England  ought  to  restore  Canada  to  France,  in  order 
to  hold  her  old  empire  more  securely ;  and  the  French 
statesman,  Vergennes,  prophesied:  "England  will  soon 
repent  of  having  removed  the  only  check  that  could  keep 
her  colonies  in  awe.  They  no  longer  need  her  protection. 
She  will  call  upon  them  to  contribute  toward  the  support  of 
burdens  they  have  helped  bring  upon  her ;  and  they  will  answer 
by  striking  off  all  dependence" 

3.  The  colonies  had  been  held  to  England  by  ties  internal 
and  external,  —  by  affection  and  by  foreign  peril.  The 
internal  tie,  however,  had  already  been  sapped,  •«  writs  of 
insensibly,  by  the  large  non-English  immigration  assistance" 
and  by  the  long  friction  over  Navigation  Acts,  paper  money, 
royal  vetoes,  and  governors'  salaries  (page  144).  Now  the 
external  bond,  too,  was  loosened,  and  a  shock  might  jar  the 
two  halves  of  the  empire  apart.  The  Intercolonial  wars  led 
England  to  give  this  shock  —  first  by  her  "writs  of  assist 
ance"  to  enforce  old  laws,  and  then  by  new  taxation,  in  the 
Sugar  Act  of  1764  and  in  the  Stamp  Act. 

The  "writs  of  assistance"  were  used  to  enforce  the  old 
Navigation  Acts  with  a  new  energy.  This  policy  began 
with  Pitt,  during  the  French  and  Indian  War.  The  original 


170  SEPARATION  FROM  ENGLAND 

purpose  was,  not  to  raise  revenue,  but  to  stop  what  Pitt 
indignantly  and  truly  called  "an  illegal  and  most  pernicious 
Trade  ...  by  which  the  Enemy  .  .  .is  supplied  with 
Provisions  and  other  Necessaries,  whereby  they  are  prin 
cipally,  if  not  alone,  enabled  to  sustain  and  protract  this  long 
and  expensive  War."  The  French  armies  in  Canada  and  the 
French  fleets  in  the  West  Indies  were  fed  by  provisions  shipped 
to  them  from  New  England,  at  the  very  time  that  England  was 
fighting  desperately  to  protect  New  England  against  those 
armies  and  fleets.  Many  colonists  confused  this  shameful 
trade  with  the  ordinary  smuggling  which  had  long  made  parts 
of  the  navigation  laws  a  dead  letter.  On  the  other  side,  the 
customs  officials  fell  back  upon  remedies  as  bad  as  the  evil. 
In  1755  they  began  to  use  general  search  warrants,  known 
as  "writs  of  assistance."  This  form  of  warrant  had  grown 
up  in  England  in  the  evil  times  of  the  Stuart  kings.  It  ran 
counter  to  the  ancient  English  principle  that  a  man's  house 
was  "his  castle,"  into  which  not  even  the  officer  of  the  law 
might  enter  without  the  owner's  permission,  except  upon 
definite  cause  shown.  Unlike  ordinary  search  warrants, 
these  new  documents  did  not  name  a  particular  place  to  be 
searched  or  a  particular  thing  to  be  searched  for,  nor  did 
they  make  public  the  name  of  the  informer  upon  whose 
testimony  they  were  issued.  They  authorized  any  officer 
to  enter  any  house  upon  any  suspicion,  and  "were  directed 
against  a  whole  people."  They  might  easily  become  in 
struments  of  tyranny,  and  even  of  personal  revenge  by  petty 
officials. 

When  George  III  came  to  the  throne,  in  1760,  all  writs 
of  the  past  reign  expired.  Accordingly,  in  1761,  a  revenue 
And  James  officer  at  Boston  asked  a  Massachusetts  court  to 
otis  issue  new  "writs  of  assistance."  It  then  became 

the  place  of  James  Otis,  the  brilliant  young  Advocate  Gen 
eral,  to  argue  for  them.  Instead,  he  resigned  his  office,  and 
took  the  case  against  them.  "Otis  was  a  flame  of  fire.  Then 
and  there  the  child  Independence  was  born."  x  He  called  the 

1  So  wrote  John  Adams  some  years  afterward.  The  other  quotations  in  the 
paragraph  are  from  notes  taken  at  the  time  by  Adams,  then  a  law  student.  How 


HOW  THE  FRENCH  WARS  PREPARED  THE  WAY       171 

general  warrants  "the  worst  instrument  of  arbitrary  power, 
the  most  destructive  of  English  liberty  and  of  the  funda 
mental  principles  of  law,  that  ever  was  found  in  an  English 
law  book."  He  contended,  he  said,  against  "  a  kind  of  power, 
the  exercise  of  which  had  cost  one  king  of  England  his  crown, 
and  another  his  head.  .  .  .  No  Act  of  Parliament  can  estab 
lish  such  a  writ.  .  .  .  An  act  against  the  constitution  is  void.'9 
This  final  argument  is  natural  to  Americans  to-day, 
familiar  as  we  are  with  the  idea  of  a  written  constitution 
as  &  fundamental  law,  to  which  all  other  law  must  conform. 
In  England  to-day  such  an  argument  would  be  almost  im 
possible,  since  there  parliament  has  come  to  be  so  supreme 
that  it  can  change  the  law  and  the  "constitution"  at  will. 
In  older  English  history,  however,  the  Common  Law  and 
the  great  charters  (especially  in  so  far  as  they  protected  the 
rights  of  the  individual)  had  been  regarded  somewhat  as 
we  regard  our  constitutions ;  and  in  the  time  of  Otis  that 
view  had  not  been  wholly  lost.  It  is  in  this  old  English 
sense  that  he  uses  the  word  "constitution."  It  is  interest 
ing  to  note  that  a  few  years  later,  the  Court  of  the  King's 
Bench  adopted  this  view  and  declared  general  warrants  in 
England  unconstitutional. 

Otis  lost  the  case,  but  his  fiery  eloquence  roused  the 
people  to  open  the  whole  question  of  parliamentary  control. 
Soon  afterward,  he  published  his  views  in  two  pamphlets 
which  were  widely  read.  "God  made  all  men  naturally 
equal"  he  affirmed.  Government  is  "instituted  for  the' 
benefit  of  the  governed,"  and  harmful  government  should 
be  destroyed.  Parliament  he  recognized  as  supreme  (so 
long  as  it  governed  fitly),  but  he  urged  that  the  colonists, 
besides  keeping  their  local  legislatures,  "should  also  be 
represented,  in  some  proportion  to  their  number  and  estates, 
in  the  grand  legislature  of  the  nation" 

profoundly  the  argument  of  Otis  impressed  America  is  seen  from  the  fact  that  when 
Virginia  in  1776  adopted  the  first  written  state  constitution,  the  declaration  of 
rights  prohibited  "general  warrants"  (page  214).  This  provision  has  appeared  in 
nearly  all  our  subsequent  State  constitutions,  and  it  is  found  in  the  Federal  Con 
stitution  (Amendment  IV). 


172  SEPARATION  FROM  ENGLAND 

In  1763,  peace  removed  the  especial  need  for  writs  of 
assistance;  and  for  a  time  the  Americans  forgot  all  past 
Grenviiie's  irritation  in  their  enthusiastic  gratitude  to  Eng- 
pian  to  land  for  the  conquest  of  Canada.  But  in  a  few 
months  a  new  head  of  the  English  ministry  re 
opened  all  the  old  wounds.  This  was  George  Grenville, 
an  earnest,  narrow  man,  without  tact  or  statesmanship,  bent 
upon  raising  revenue  in  America. 

A  strong  case  could  be  made  out  for  that  plan.  The 
Intercolonial  wars  had  made  England  the  greatest  world 
power ;  but  they  left  her,  too,  staggering  under  a  debt  such 
as  no  country  to  that  time  had  dreamed  of.  The  colonists 
were  prosperous  and  lightly  burdened.  Eight  millions  of 
Englishmen  owed  a  war  debt  of  ninety  dollars  a  head  —  in 
curred  largely  in  defending  two  million  colonials,  whose  debt 
counted  less  than  two  dollars  a  head.  Nor  could  the  colo 
nists  excuse  themselves  on  the  ground  that  they  had  done 
enough  in  the  wars.  The  struggles  in  America  had  been 
little  more  than  scattered  skirmishes,  compared  with  the 
Titanic  conflicts  in  the  Old  World.  Pitt  had  declared  that 
he  would  "conquer  [French]  America  in  Germany,"  and, 
with  the  aid  of  Frederick  the  Great,  he  did  it.  Even  in 
America,  England  had  furnished  fully  half  the  troops  and 
nearly  all  the  money  —  repaying  each  colony  for  all  expense 
in  maintaining  its  own  troops  when  outside  its  own  borders. 

In  the  Crown  Point  expedition  of  1755  (before  war  was  declared}, 
the  3000  Colonials  made  the  whole  force ;  and  during  the  next 
year  4000  of  the  5000  troops  in  the  field  were  Colonials.  But  after 
England  formally  declared  war,  English  troops  plainly  pre 
ponderated.  Amherst  at  Louisburg  had  only  100  Colonials  among 
his  11,000  troops.  At  Quebec,  Wolfe  had  8500  regulars  and  only 
700  Americans  —  whom  he  described  as  "the  dirtiest,  most  con 
temptible,  cowardly  dogs  .  .  .  such  rascals  as  are  an  encumbrance 
to  an  army." 

Still  Grenville  did  not  expect  the  colonies  to  pay  any 
part  of  the  debt  already  incurred  by  England.  He  meant 
only  to  have  them  bear  a  part  of  the  cost  of  their  own  de- 


HOW  THE  FRENCH  WARS  PREPARED  THE  WAY       173 

fense  for  the  future.  English  statesmen  agreed  that,  to  guard 
against  French  reconquest  and  Indian  outbreaks,  it  was 
necessary  to  keep  ten  thousand  troops  in  America.  For  Ameri_ 
It  was  easy  to  find  evidence  that  seemed  to  show  can  defense 
the  need  of  such  a  garrison.  Pontiac's  War,  the  only 
most  terrible  Indian  outbreak  the  colonists  ever  knew,  came 
just  at  the  close  of  the  French  War,  in  1763,  and  raged  for 
more  than  a  year,  sweeping  bare,  with  torch  and  tomahawk,  a 
long  stretch  of  western  country.  A  few  British  regiments, 
left  in  the  country  from  the  preceding  war,  were  the  only 
reason  the  disaster  was  not  unspeakably  worse.  For  six 
months  they  were  the  only  troops  in  the  field.  The  Pennsylvania 
legislature,  despite  frantic  appeals  from  the  governor,  de 
layed  to  provide  defense  for  its  own  frontier,  —  partly  from 
Quaker  principles,  but  more  from  a  shameful  dislike  felt 
by  the  older  districts  for  the  Scotch-Irish  western  counties. 
The  savages,  having  worked  their  will  in  that  province, 
carried  their  raids  across  its  southern  border,  getting  into 
the  rear  of  a  small  force  with  which  George  Washington  was 
striving  gallantly  to  guard  the  western  frontier  of  Virginia. 
Washington's  force,  too,  was  for  months  altogether  insuffi 
cient  for  its  task.  His  letters  to  the  governor  of  Virginia 
complained  bitterly  of  his  need  for  reinforcements ;  but 
the  governor's  earnest  entreaties  to  the  legislature  for  sup 
plies  bore  fruit  very  slowly.  Washington  declared  that  he 
would  have  been  wholly  helpless  for  a  long,  critical  time, 
had  he  not  had  under  his  command  a  small  troop  of  English 
soldiers. 

But  the  colonists,  quite  in  accord  with  old  English  preju 
dice  against  a  standing  army  in  time  of  peace,  had  many 
times  made  it  plain  that  their  Assemblies  would  give  no 
money  to  support  one.     Indeed  they  feared  that  such  a 
garrison  might  sometime  be  used  by  a  despotic  government 
in  England  to  take  away  their  liberties.      Accord-  Enforce 
ingly  Grenville  decided  to  get  the  money  for  the  ment  of 
support   of    a  garrison    by   taxing    the   colonists 
through    parliament.     (1)    He    would    make    the 
Navigation  Acts  a  source  of  revenue,  instead  of  merely  a  means 


174  SEPARATION  FROM  ENGLAND 

of  benefiting  English  merchants ;  and  (2)  he  would  raise 
money  in  America  by  internal  taxes,  —  a  thing  never  before 
attempted.  In  1764  he  ordered  that  the  Navigation  Acts 
be  enforced  rigidly  ;  and  zealous  revenue  officers  in  America 
spread  dismay  and  irritation  by  suddenly  seizing  many  ships 
with  cargoes  of  smuggled  goods.  Then,  upon  communities 
already  angry  and  suspicious,  fell  news  of  a  new  tax  law. 

This  was  the  "Sugar  Act"  of  1764-  The  old  Sugar  Act 
of  1733  had  tried  to  check  the  importation  of  sugar  from  the 
The  Sugar  French  West  Indies  —  in  the  interest  of  the  Brit- 
Act  of  1764  ish  West  Indies  (page  139).  This  law  had  never 
been  enforced.  The  new  "Sugar  Act"  (1)  provided  ma 
chinery  more  efficient  than  ever  before  to  enforce  the 
whole  system  of  navigation  laws ;  (2)  revised  those  laws  so 
as  to  raise  more  revenue ;  and  (3)  forbade  absolutely  all 
trade  with  the  French  West  Indies  —  which  were  a  chief 
market  for  the  products  of  New  England  and  of  the  Middle 
colonies  (page  162). 

The  commercial  colonies  were  angered  and  alarmed.  They 
had  never  so  feared  French  conquest  as  they  now  feared 
the  loss  of  French  trade.  With  every  mail  from  America,  a 
storm  of  protests  assailed  the  ministry.  But  the  Sugar  Act 
did  not  directly  affect  the  southern  colonies;  and  therefore 
resistance  to  it  could  not  arouse  a  united  America.  More 
over,  though  this  law  did  aim  to  raise  revenue,  still  in  form 
it  was  like  preceding  navigation  laws,  to  which  the  colonists 
were  accustomed.  The  leaders  of  public  opinion  needed  a 
better  rallying  cry  than  it  gave,  to  array  the  colonies  against 
English  rule. 

The  Stamp  Act  gave  this  better  opportunity.  Early  in 
1764,  Grenville  made  the  plan  of  this  law  public.  Parlia- 
The  stamp  ment  promptly  adopted  resolutions  approving  the 
Act,  1765  plan,  but  gave  the  colonies  a  year  more  to  pro 
vide  some  other  means  for  supporting  a  garrison,  if  they 
preferred.  The  colonies  suggested  no  other  plan,  but  they 
made  loud  protests  against  this  one.  In  the  fall  of  1764 
the  Sugar  Act  fell  into  the  background ;  and  from  colonial 
town  meetings  and  Assemblies  petitions  began  to  assail  the 


INHERENT  CAUSES  175 

ministry  against  the  unconstitutional  nature  of  the  pro 
posed  Stamp  Act.  These  communications  Grenville  never 
presented  to  parliament.  In  March,  1765,  parliament 
enacted  the  law  almost  without  discussion,  and  with  no 
suspicion  of  the  storm  about  to  break. 

The  Stamp  Act  was  modeled  upon  a  law  in  force  in  Great 
Britain.  It  required  the  use  of  stamps  or  stamped  paper 
for  newspapers,  pamphlets,  cards  and  dice,  and  for  all  legal 
documents  (wills,  deeds,  writs).  In  a  few  instances,  where 
the  document  recorded  some  important  grant,  the  cost  of 
the  stamp  rose  to  several  pounds ;  but,  as  a  rule,  it  ranged 
from  a  penny  to  a  shilling.  Not  a  penny  was  to  go  to  Eng 
land.  The  whole  revenue  was  appropriated  to  the  future  sup 
port  of  an  American  garrison. 

Now  came  a  significant  change  in  the  agitation  in  Amer 
ica.  Astute  leaders  seized  the  chance  to  rally  public  dis 
satisfaction  against  England  by  appeals  to  the  old  English 
cry,  -  "No  taxation  without  representation."  In  opposing 
the  Sugar  Act,  the  colonists  opposed  an  immediate  injury 
to  their  pocket  books ;  but,  from  1765,  they  contended,  not 
against  actual  oppression,  but  against  a  principle  which 
might  lead  to  oppression.  "They  made  their  stand,"  says 
Moses  Coit  Tyler,  "not  against  tyranny  inflicted,  but 
against  tyranny  anticipated."  The  Americans  surpassed 
even  the  English  of  that  day  in  what  Burke  called  their 
"fierce  spirit  of  liberty."  The  freest  people  .of  their  age, 
they  were  fit  for  more  freedom,  and  they  "waged  a  revo 
lution  for  an  idea." 

II.   UNDERLYING   CAUSES  IN  AMERICAN  LIFE 

The  English  colonial  system  had  guided  and  guarded  the 
colonies  while  they  needed  help   and  protection.     It  was 
not  tyrannical ;   but  it  was  sometimes  selfish  and  American 
often   short   sighted,   and   it  always  carried   the  jj*^^ 
possibility  of   further   interference.1     True,  until  interference 

1  Many  shrewd  observers  (John  Adams  among  others)  believed  that  the  Revolu 
tion  was  caused  largely  by  dread  of  ecclesiastical  interference.  Several  times  it 


176  SEPARATION  FROM  ENGLAND 

1764,  actual  interference  had  never  been  seriously  hurt 
ful.  Often  it  had  been  helpful.  But  any  interference  was 
vexatious  to  a  proud  people,  who  now  felt  safe  enough 
and  strong  enough  to  manage  their  own  affairs.  The 
The  colonial  Americans  had  outgrown  any  colonial  system  pos- 
system  sible  in  that  day.  They  were  grown  up.  The 

time  had  come  for  independence.  "  The  crime  of 
the  British  statesmen  was  that  they  didn't  know  a  nation 
when  they  saw  one."  In  one  of  his  historical  addresses 
Mellin  Chamberlain  puts  the  cause  of  the  Revolution  in  a 
nutshell.  Levi  Preston  was  one  of  the  minutemen  of 
Danvers  who  ran  sixteen  miles  to  get  into  the  Lexington 
fight.  Nearly  seventy  years  afterward,  Mr.  Chamberlain 
interviewed  the  old  veteran  as  to  his  reasons  that  April 
morning.  "  Oppressions  ?  "  said  the  aroused  veteran ;  "  what 
were  they  ?  I  didn't  feel  any."  "  Stamp  Act  ?  "  "  I  never  saw 
one  of  the  stamps."  "Tea  tax?"  "I  never  drank  a  drop 
of  the  stuff:  the  boys  threw  it  all  overboard."  "Well,  I 
suppose  you  had  been  reading  Sidney  or  Locke  about  the 
eternal  principles  of  liberty."  "Never  heard  of  them.  We 
read  only  the  Bible,  the  Catechism,  Watts'  Hymns,  and 
the  Almanac."  "Then  what  did  you  mean  by  going  into 
that  fight?"  "Young  man,  what  we  meant  in  going  for 
those  redcoats  was  this  :  we  always  had  governed  ourselves,  and 
we  always  meant  to.  They  didn't  mean  we  should." 

And  in  growing  up,  America  had  grown  away  from  England. 
If  all  of  England  had  been  picked  up  in  the  seventeenth 

century  and  set  down,  strung  out  along  the  thou- 

sand  miles  of  American  coast  from  Maine  to 
English  and  Georgia,  its  development  during  the  next  two 
Americans*1  centuries  would  have  been  very  different  from 

what  it  actually  was  in  the  little  European  island. 
The  new  physical  conditions  would  have  caused  a  difference. 

had  been  suggested  that  England  should  establish  bishops  in  America.  Even 
the  most  strongly  Episcopalian  colonies,  like  Virginia  and  Maryland,  resisted  this 
proposal  (needful  as  bishops  were  to  the  true  efficiency  of  their  form  of  church 
organization)  because  of  the  political  power  of  such  officers  of  the  church  at  that 
time.  After  the  Revolution  a  bishop,  consecrated  in  England,  was  received  with 
out  a  murmur. 


INHERENT  CAUSES 


177 


A  COLONIAL  CARTOON  called  forth  by  a  proposal  from  Lord  Hilsborough,  Colonial 
Secretary,  for  sending  a  bishop  to  America. 


178  SEPARATION  FROM  ENGLAND 

But  not  all  England  had  been  transplanted,  only  certain 
selected  people  and  selected  institutions,  —  upon  the  whole, 
too,  the  more  democratic  elements.  No  hereditary  nobility 
was  established  in  America,  and  neither  monarch  nor  bishop 
in  person  appeared  in  American  society.  No  wonder,  then, 
that  by  1775  European  English  and  American  English  could 
no  longer  understand  each  other's  ideas. 

Both  sections  of  Englishmen  clung  to  the  doctrine  "No 
taxation  without  representation,"  but  these  words  meant 
one  thing  in  England  and  a  very  different  thing  in  America. 
In  England,  since  1688,  representative  institutions  had  been 
shrinking,  —  becoming  more  and  more  virtual.  In  America 
representative  institutions  had  been  expanding,  —  becoming 
more  and  more  real.  The  English  system  had  become,  in 
Macaulay's  words,  "a  monstrous  system  of  represented 
ruins  and  unrepresented  cities."  Many  populous  cities  had 
grown  up  without  gaining  representation,  while  many  decayed 
cities,  perhaps  without  a  single  inhabitant,  or  with  only  a 
handful  of  voters  (pocket  or  rotten  boroughs),  kept  their 
ancient  "representation."  In  reality,  a  small  body  of  land 
lords  appointed  a  majority  of  the  House  of  Commons,  and 
many  "representatives"  were  utterly  unknown  in  the  places 
they  "represented."  To  an  Englishman,  accustomed  to 
this  system,  and  content  with  it,  "No  taxation  without  repre 
sentation"  meant  no  taxation  by  royal  edict:  no  taxation 
except  by  the  House  of  Commons,  a  "representative"  body. 
Such  an  Englishman  might  argue  (as  Lord  Mansfield  did) 
that  parliament  represented  Massachusetts  as  much  as  it  did 
the  English  Manchester,  which  equally  with  Massachusetts 
was  without  votes  for  parliament.  There  were  more  men  in 
England  who  were  taxed  and  who  could  not  vote  than  there 
were  inhabitants  in  all  America.  Parliament  virtually  repre 
sented  the  colonies,  and  therefore  had  the  right  to  tax  them. 
"  Virtual "  ^e  argument  was  weak,  even  if  representation 
representa-  was  to  remain  "virtual."  Manchester,  though 
tion  and  without  votes,  was  sure  to  influence  parliament, 
and  to  be  understood  by  parliament,  far  better 
than  distant  Massachusetts.  But  the  American  was  not  con- 


INHERENT  CAUSES  179 

tent  with  virtual  representation :  he  was  accustomed  in 
his  own  colony  to  real  representation.  True,  there  were 
imperfections  in  the  American  system.  Some  colonies, 
notably  Pennsylvania  and  the  Carolinas,  had  been  slow  to 
grant  a  proper  share  in  their  legislatures  to  their  own 
western  counties.  But,  upon  the  whole,  the  electoral 
districts  were  about  equal  in  population;  the  franchise 
was  extended  far  enough  to  reach  most  men  with  a  little 
property ;  and  each  little  district  chose  for  its  repre 
sentative,  at  frequent  intervals,  a  man  living  in  its  midst 
and  well  known  to  the  voters.  To  the  American,  "No 
taxation  without  representation"  meant  no  taxation  except 
by  a  representative  body  in  his  own  colony,  chosen  under 
such  conditions  as  these.  In  all  this  dispute  the  Englishman 
stood  upon  the  old  meaning  of  the  phrase.  The  American 
stood  for  a  new  meaning,  truer  and  higher,  more  in  accord 
with  future  progress. 

The  problem,  however,  was  not  merely  about  taxation : 
it  was  a  question,  also,  of  maintaining  the  unity  of  the  British 
Empire,  —  the  greatest  free  state  the  world  had  The  prot,iem 
ever  seen.  To  preserve  that  state  appealed  to  of  imperial 
a  noble  patriotism  on  both  sides  the  Atlantic.  um( 
Most  people,  too,  thought  union  with  England  essential 
to  the  very  existence  of  the  colonies.  Plainly  the  separate 
colonies  were  too  weak  to  stand  alone ;  and  their  union, 
except  through  England,  seemed  the  wildest  of  dreams. 
During  the  past  seventy  years,  colony  after  colony,  for 
time  after  time,  had  been  guilty  of  sacrificing  the  safety 
of  a  neighbor  to  sordid,  parsimony  or  to  mean  jealousy. 
Even  James  Otis  wrote  in  1765, — "God  forbid  these 
colonies  should  ever  prove  undutiful  to  their  mother 
country.  .  .  .  Were  the  colonies  left  to  themselves  to-morrow, 
America  would  be  a  mere  shambles  of  blood  and  confusion" 

Englishmen  argued  that  the  essential  unity  of  the  empire 
could  be  preserved  only  by  recognizing  a  supreme  power 
in  parliament  to  bind  all  parts  of  the  empire  in  all  mat 
ters  whatsoever,  including  taxation.  Americans  confessed, 
gratefully,  that  union  with  England  was  "the  source  of  our 


180  SEPARATION  FROM  ENGLAND 

greatest  happiness";  but  they  denied  the  authority  of  par 
liament  to  tax  them,  and  so  were  soon  driven  to  deny  any 
authority  in  parliament.  The  situation  was  new.  Within 
two  or  three  generations,  England  had  been  transformed 
from  a  little  island  state,  with  a  few  outlying  plantations, 
into  the  center  of  a  world  empire.  Within  the  same  period, 
the  relative  power  of  king  and  parliament  had  shifted  greatly 
in  England  itself.  This  change  made  necessary  a  new  rela 
tion  between  parliament  and  the  colonies ;  but  just  what 
that  relation  ought  to  be  was  not  clear. 

Many  colonists,  who  clung  to  the  union  while  denying 
authority  in  parliament,  were  driven  to  a  dubious  doctrine. 
Theory  of  a  ^ne  c°l°nies>  they  said,  were  subject,  not  to  parlia- 
"  personal  ment,  but  to  the  crown.  The  union  between  Mas 
sachusetts  and  England,  according  to  this  view 
of  Jefferson  and  Franklin,  was  only  "in  the  person  of  the 
sovereign,"  like  the  union  between  England  and  Scotland 
under  James  I.  George  III  was  king  in  England  and  king 
in  Massachusetts ;  but  parliament  was  the  legislature  of 
the  British  Isles  only,  as  the  General  Court  was  the  legisla 
ture  of  Massachusetts. 

In  the  argument  over  taxation,  the  Americans  had  the 
best  of  it,  because  they  placed  themselves  upon  modern 
conditions,  ignoring  dead  theories.  But  in  this  second  argu 
ment,  it  was  the  Americans  who  clung  to  a  dead  theory.  In 
earlier  times  there  had  been  some  basis  for  the  doctrine  of 
the  crown's  sovereignty  in  America.  The  colonies  were 
founded  upon  "crown  lands";  and  the  kings  had  tried  to 
keep  them  crown  estates.  In  those  days,  the  colonists  had 
been  glad  to  seek  refuge  in  management  by  parliament. 
During  the  Commonwealth,  parliament  exercised  extensive 
control,  and  ever  since,  from  time  to  time  it  had  legislated 
for  the  colonies,  —  not  merely  in  commercial  regulations, 
but  in  various  beneficent  matters,  as  in  the  establishment 
of  the  colonial  post  office.  Meantime,  the  English  Revolu 
tion  of  1688  had  made  parliament  supreme  over  the  king. 
George  III  was  "king  in  Massachusetts"  only  because  he 
was  king  of  England;  and  he  was  king  of  England  only  be- 


INHERENT  CAUSES  181 

cause  of  an  Act  of  Parliament.  Indeed,  had  the  king's  power 
been  real  any  longer,  the  colonists  would  never  have  ap 
pealed  to  a  theory  of  "personal  union."  The  plea  was  a 
device  to  escape  real  control  of  any  kind. 

To  reconcile  freedom  and  empire  for  the  far-flung  English- 
speaking  world  was  hard  indeed.  How  hard  is  shown  no 
where  better  than  by  the  absurd  contention  to  which  the 
great  Pitt  was  driven  —  that  parliament  might  govern  the 
colonies  in  all  other  respects  but  might  not  tax  them,  because 
"taxation  is  no  part  of  the  governing  or  legislative  power." 
Almost  equally  absurd  in  that  day,  for  all  practical  pur 
poses,  was  James  Otis'  suggestion,  approved  by  Franklin 
and  by  Adam  Smith,  that  the  colonies  be  given  representa 
tion  in  a  reformed,  imperial  parliament.  Steam  and  elec 
tricity  had  not  yet  come,  to  annihilate  the  three  Burke's 
months  between  Boston  and  London.  The  only  plan 
promising  solution  of  the  problem,  in  accord  with  condi 
tions  of  the  time,  was  the  one  stated  in  the  noble  passage 
toward  the  close  of  Burke's  oration  on  American  taxation  :  — 

"I  look  upon  the  imperial  rights  of  Great  Britain  and  the 
privileges  which  the  colonists  ought  to  enjoy  under  those  rights 
to  be  just  the  most  reconcilable  things  in  the  world.  The  parlia 
ment  of  Great  Britain  sits  at  the  head  of  her  extensive  empire  in 
two  capacities :  one  as  the  local  legislature  of  this  island.  .  .  . 
The  other,  and  I  think  her  nobler,  capacity  is  what  I  call  her 
imperial  character,  in  which,  as  from  the  throne  of  heaven,  she 
superintends  all  the  inferior  legislatures,  and  guides  and  controls 
them  all,  without  annihilating  any.  ...  It  is  necessary  to  coerce 
the  negligent,  to  restrain  the  violent,  and  to  aid  the  weak  ...  by 
the  over-ruling  plenitude  of  her  power." 

Parliament,  the  orator  continues,  is  not  to  intrude  into 
the  place  of  an  inferior  colonial  legislature  while  that  body 
answers  to  its  proper  functions;  "but,  to  enable  parliament 
to  accomplish  these  ends  of  beneficent  superintendence,  her 
power  must  be  boundless,"  -  including  even  the  power  to 
tax,  Burke  adds  explicitly,  though  he  regards  that  as  a 
reserve  power,  to  be  used  only  in  the  last  extremity,  as  "an 


182  SEPARATION  FROM  ENGLAND 

instrument  of  empire,  not  a  means  of  supply."  That  is, 
Burke  would  have  had  parliament  recognized  as  possessing 
absolute  power,  in  order  that  at  need  it  might  preserve  the 
empire  ;  but  he  would  have  had  it  waive  its  authority  in 
ordinary  times  in  favor  of  the  rights  of  the  colonists  to  self- 
government  through  their  local  legislatures.  Probably  this 
plan  would  have  been  as  nearly  satisfactory  as  any  solution 
of  the  problem  then  possible,  if  any  union  was  to  be  main 
tained.  Adopted  half  a  century  later,  it  was  to  answer  the 
needs  of  a  greater  English  empire  for  eighty  years  longer. 
But  to  work  Burke's  plan  called  for  tact  and  generosity, 
especially  while  the  two  parts  of  the  English  world  were 
getting  used  to  the  new  conditions.  Neither  tact  nor  gen 
erosity  marked  Charles  Townshend  or  Lord  North  ;  and  the 
clumsy  machinery  of  government  broke  down. 

Even  so,  parliament  let  the  ministry  drive  the  colonists 
to  rebellion  only  because  parliament  itself  represented  Eng 
land    only    virtually.     The     contention    between 
George's  government  and  the  colonies  had 


lutionto  become  intermingled  with  a  struggle  for  the 
freedom  reform  of  parliament  at  home.  For  some  time 
the  Whig  leaders  in  England  had  demanded  ve 
hemently  that  the  franchise  be  broadened  and  that  parlia 
ment  be  made  really  representative  of  the  nation.  If  the 
demand  of  the  Americans  regarding  taxation  and  repre 
sentation  were  granted,  then  it  would  not  be  possible  for 
the  government  much  longer  to  refuse  this  demand  for 
representation  by  English  cities  like  Manchester.  But  this 
was  just  what  conscientiously  wrong-headed  George  III 
dreaded.  He  thought  it  his  duty  to  recover  the  kingly 
power  that  had  vanished  since  the  English  Revolution. 
To  do  this,  he  must  be  able  to  control  parliament.  The 
easiest  way  to  control  parliament  was  to  pack  that  body  with 
his  own  appointees  from  rotten  and  pocket  boroughs.  In 
a  reformed  parliament,  this  would  no  longer  be  possible. 
The  King,  therefore,  was  ready  to  force  on  a  war  against 
the  American  claim  in  order  to  shove  aside  the  reform  move 
ment  in  England. 


INHERENT  CAUSES  183 

The  American  Revolution,  then,  is  seen  imperfectly,  if  it  is 
looked  upon  solely  as  a  struggle  between  England  and 
America.  It  was  a  strife  of  principles.  It  was  a  part  of  a 
thousand-year-long  contest  between  the  English-speaking 
people  and  their  kings  for  more  political  liberty.  In  1776 
the  most  advanced  part  of  that  people,  politically,  lived  on 
this  side  of  the  Atlantic.  The  popular  claims  were  made 
here,  and  the  struggle  was  fought  out  here ;  but  in  many 
ways  the  Revolution  was  a  true  civil  war.  Many  Americans 
were  not  in  favor  of  fighting,  and  many  Englishmen  were 
glad  that  America  did  fight. 

This  feeling  found  expression  even  within  parliament. 
The  resolution  of  Patrick  Henry  declaring  that  the  attempt 
to  tax  America,  if  successful,  would  result  in  the  Whig 
ruin  of  British  liberty  also,  was  echoed  by  the  sympathy 
great  speech  of  William  Pitt,  when  he  "rejoiced" 
that  America  had  resisted,  and  declared  that  victory  over 
the  colonies  would  be  of  ill  omen  for  English  liberty : 
"America,  if  she  fell,  would  fall  like  the  strong  man:,  she 
would  embrace  the  pillars  of  the  state,  and  pull  down 
the  constitution  along  with  her."  When  troops  were  sent 
to  Boston  in  1774,  the  Earl  of  Rockingham  and  other 
Whig  lords  presented  a  protest  to  be  inscribed  on  the  jour 
nals  of  parliament,  and  the  Duke  of  Richmond  broke 
out:  "I  hope  from  the  bottom  of  my  heart  that  the 
Americans  may  resist  and  get  the  better  of  the  forces  sent 
against  them."  Charles  Fox  spoke  in  parliament  of  Wash 
ington's  first  defeat  as  "the  terrible  news  from  Long  Island," 
and,  in  common  with  many  Whigs,  repeatedly  called  the 
American  cause  "the  cause  of  liberty."  As  late  as  1782, 
only  four  months  before  peace  was  made,  the  younger 
William  Pitt  asserted  in  parliament  that  if  the  House  of 
Commons  had  not  imperfectly  represented  the  nation,  it 
would  never  have  been  possible  to  carry  on  that  "most 
accursed,  wicked,  barbarous,  cruel,  unjust,  and  diabolical 
war."  Certainly  the  American,  accustomed  in  our  day 
to  see  popular  intolerance  of  opinion  suppress  dissent  even 
in  legislative  halls,  should  honor  the  English  respect  for 


184  SEPARATION  FROM  ENGLAND 

free   speech,   which  compelled  even   the   Tory  government 
of  George  III  to  listen  to  such  noble  "treason." 

The  American  movement  for  independence  was  intertwined, 
too,  with  a  social  upheaval  at  home.  This  social  unrest  had 
four  phases. 

1.  In  nearly  all  the  colonies,  a  group  of  families  —  pets 
of  the  crown  or  of  the  proprietor  —  monopolized  office  and 

special  privilege.     Other  great  families    (like   the 

The  social          *.  &         .  v 

revolution      Livingstones  and   Schuylers   in   New    York)    lelt 
in  American  aggrieved,   and  therefore  were  perhaps  more  in 
clined  to  the  movement  for  independence. 

2.  The  western  sections  of  many  colonies  felt  themselves  op 
pressed  by  the  older  sections.     The  inhabitants  of  the  new 
TH  "E     "   wes^ern  counties   sometimes   differed   from   their 
and  eastern  brethren  in  religion  or  even  in  race ;  and 
•  TmSt '         they  were  not  given  their  fair  representation  in 

the  colonial  legislature  which  taxed  and  governed 
them,  —  but  which  sometimes  failed  to  protect  them  against 
Indians.  In  1780  Thomas  Jefferson  declared  that  "19,000 
men  below  the  Falls  [in  Virginia]  give  law  to  30,000  in  other 
[western]  parts"  of  the  colony.  Sheriffs  and  other  officials 
of  the  western  counties,  too,  were  often  non-residents,  ap 
pointed  from  the  eastern  counties.  Law  courts  were  con 
trolled  by  the  older  sections ;  and  in  the  western  districts 
they  met  at  long  intervals  and  at  long  distances  from 
much  of  the  population.  And  fees  exacted  for  court 
services  and  by  all  these  appointed  officers  seemed  ex 
orbitant,  and  were  sometimes  made  so  by  disreputable 
trickery.  In  1763  a  certain  Edmund  Fanning  was  ap 
pointed  Register  for  the  county  of  Orange  in  western 
North  Carolina.  It  was  commonly  reported  that  he  was 
impecunious  when  he  received  the  appointment,  and  that  he 
accumulated  £10,000  in  two  years  by  extortion.  The 
"Regulators"  in  1770  dragged  him  from  a  courthouse  by 
the  heels  and  flogged  him ;  and  the  following  verses  were 
current  as  early  as  1765  :  - 


INHERENT  CAUSES  185 

"  When  Fanning  first  to  Orange  came, 

He  looked  both  pale  and  wan ; 
An  old  patched  coat  upon  his  back, 

An  old  mare  he  rode  on. 
Both  man  and  mare  warn't  worth  five  pounds, 

As  I've  been  often  told ; 
But  by  his  civil  robberies 

He's  laced  his  coat  with  gold." 

After  several  years  of  serious  friction,  the  oppressed 
pioneers  in  North  Carolina  in  1769  set  up  a  revolutionary 
organization  known  as  committees  of  "Regu-  The  War 
lators,"  to  prevent  the  collection  of  taxes.  But  of  the 
the  eastern  counties,  which  controlled  the  legisla-  Reg  * 
ture,  raised  an  army,  and,  in  1772,  ended  the  "War  of  the 
Regulation"  after  a  bloody  campaign.  The  Regulation  was 
not  directed  in  any  way  against  England,  and  must  not  be 
regarded  as  an  opening  campaign  of  the  Revolution.  In 
deed,  the  militia  that  restored  oppression  was  the  militia 
which  three  years  later  rose  against  England ;  and  the  de 
feated  "Regulators,"  refusing  to  join  their  past  oppressors, 
in  large  part  became  Tories.  But  if  the  internal  conflict 
could  have  been  delayed  three  or  four  years,  the  Westerners 
would  no  doubt  have  dominated  the  Revolution  itself  in 
their  State. 

That  was  what  happened  in  Pennsylvania.  Pennsylvania 
also  was  on  the  verge  of  civil  war;  but,  happily,  internal 
conflict  was  postponed  long  enough  so  that  in  the  disorders 
of  the  general  movement  against  England,  the  western 
radicals,  with  their  sympathizers  elsewhere  in  the  colony, 
found  opportunity  to  seize  the  upper  hand.  In  Pennsyl 
vania,  the  Revolution  was  a  true  internal  revolution.  Old 
leaders  were  set  aside ;  the  franchise  was  extended  to  the 
democratic  element;  and  a  new  reapportionment  brought 
the  democratic  West  into  power.  In  most  of  the  colonies 
north  of  the  Carolinas,  a  like  influence  was  felt  in  some 
degree,  —  notably  in  Virginia. 

3.  Even  in  the  older  sections  new  men  and  a  more  democratic 
portion  of  society  came  to  the  front.  Especially  in  the  years 


186  SEPARATION  FROM  ENGLAND 

1774-1775,  the  weight  in  favor  of  resistance  to  English 
control  was  often  cast  by  a  "union  of  mechanics,"  as  in 

Charleston  and  Philadelphia,  against  the  wishes 
democratic  of  the  more  conservative  merchants  and  profes- 
masses  to  sional  men.  And  aristocratic  patriots,  like  John 

Adams,  if  they  were  not  to  fail,  had  to  accept  the 
aid  not  only  of  the  artisans  but  even  of  classes  still  lower, 
—  men  who  had  not  possessed  a  vote  but  who  now,  in  times 
of  disorder,  often  seized  it.  In  many  half-formal  elections 
to  early  Revolutionary  "conventions,"  the  disfranchised 
classes  voted,  —  sometimes  on  the  explicit  invitation  of  the 
Revolutionary  committees,  sometimes  because  it  was  not 
easy  to  stop  them.  Afterward,  the  new  State  governments 
found  it  hard  not  to  recognize  in  some  degree  the  power 
that  had  helped  make  them  —  especially  as  they  continued 
to  need  that  help.  It  was  due  largely  to  the  nameless  work- 
ingmen,  and  to  the  democratic  frontier  communities,  that  the 
internal  "revolution"  widened  the  franchise  somewhat  and  did 
away  with  the  grossest  forms  of  White  servitude. 

4.  Colonial  Americans  had  been  lazy.  Critics  so  unlike 
as  Hamilton  and  Jefferson  agree  in  ascribing  this  quality  to 
Demand  their  countrymen  ;  and  all  foreign  observers  dwelt 
for  equal  upon  it  as  an  American  trait.  But  within  forty 
opportunity  vears  after  the  Revolution  this  characteristic  had 
been  replaced  by  that  restless,  pushing,  nervous,  strenuous 
activity  which  has  ever  since,  in  the  eyes  of  all  peoples,  been 
the  distinguishing  mark  of  American  life.  One  great  factor 
in  that  tremendous  and  sudden  change  in  a  people's  charac 
ter  was  the  Revolution,  because  it  opened  opportunities  more 
equally  to  all,  and  so  called  forth  new  social  energies. 

This  transformation  in  American  character  was  noticed 
as  early  as  1789.  Said  David  Ramsey  (History  of  the  Revolu 
tion,  II,  315),  "The  necessities  of  the  country  gave  a 
spring  to  the  active  powers  of  the  inhabitants,  and  a  vast 
expansion  of  the  human  mind  speedily  followed."  This  was 
America's  answer  to  those  doubters  who  thought  the  colonies 
must  perish  if  left  to  themselves  (p.  179).  Not  merely  do 


INHERENT  CAUSES  187 

new  occasions  teach  new  duties :  new  duties  arouse  new 
energies.  At  the  stirring  call  of  independence,  the  weak  and 
divided  colonies  grew  strong  and  united  enough  to  protect 
themselves  not  merely  without  England  but  even  against 
her.  The  men  who  foresaw  this  were  radicals.  They  drew 
their  conviction,  not  from  the  manifold  discouragements  of 
disreputable  facts  in  colonial  history,  but  from  a  broad  survey 
of  life  and  a  profound  faith  in  man  and  in  their  countrymen 
—  from  the  evidence  of  things  not  seen. 

Englishmen  of  that  day  sometimes  believed  sincerely  that 
the  Revolution  was  the  work  of  a  group  of  "soreheads." 
George  Washington  as  a  youth  had  been  refused  a  coveted 
commission  in  the  British  Army.  Sam  Adams'  father  had 
been  ruined  by  the  wise  British  veto  of  a  proposed  Massa 
chusetts  "Land  Bank."  The  older  Otis  had  failed  to  secure 
an  appointment  on  the  Massachusetts  Bench.  Alexander 
Hamilton  was  a  penniless  and  briefless  law  student,  with 
no  chance  for  special  advancement  unless  by  fishing  in 
troubled  waters. 

All  this,  of  course,  as  an  explanation  of  the  part  played 
by  Washington,  Adams,  Otis,  and  Hamilton,  was  as  absurd 
as  was  the  view  of  many  Americans  that  high-minded  men 
like  Chief  Justice  Oliver  and  Governor  Hutchinson  of  Mas 
sachusetts  were  Loyalists  simply  in  order  to  cling  to  office 
and  salary.  But  had  the  British  charge  been  true,  what 
greater  condemnation  could  be  invented  for  the  old  colonial 
system  than  that,  under  it,  George  Washington  could  not 
get  a  petty  lieutenant's  appointment,  and  that  a  genius  like 
Hamilton  had  practically  no  chance  for  advancement  unless 
taken  up  by  some  great  gentlemen  ! 


CHAPTER  X 

TEN   YEARS    OF   AGITATION,    1765-1774 

THE  Stamp  Act  was  to  go  into  effect  in  November.  The 
news  reached  the  colonies  in  April  and  May.  The  colo- 
The  old  n*sts  ^ad  done  a^  tnev  could  to  prevent  the  law 
leaders  from  enactment  ;  but  now  that  it  was  law,  nearly 


and  the  a}}  j-^g  ou  leaders  at  first  expected  it  to  be  obeyed. 
Even  Otis  declared  it  to  be  the  "duty  of  all 
humbly  ...  to  acquiesce  in  the  decision  of  the  supreme 
legislature."  And  Franklin  wrote  home,  —  thinking  chiefly, 
it  would  seem,  of  the  money  burden,  -  "We  might  as  well 
have  hindered  the  sun's  setting.  .  .  .  Since  it  is  down  .  .  . 
let  us  make  as  good  a  night  of  it  as  we  can.  Frugality  and 
industry  will  go  a  great  way  toward  indemnifying  us." 
Franklin  even  solicited  the  English  government  to  appoint 
his  friends  as  stamp  distributors. 

But  while  the  old  leaders  sought  to  reconcile  themselves 
to  the  law,  popular  discontent  was  smoldering  ;  and  soon  a 
new  leader  fanned  it  into  flame.  May  29,  in  the  Virginia 
House  of  Burgesses  (sitting  in  committee  of  the  whole), 
Patrick  Henry  moved  a  set  of  seven  resolutions  denouncing 
the  Stamp  Act  and  urging  resistance  to  it. 

Henry  had  appeared  in  the  Assembly  for  the  first  time 

only  nine  days  before;    and  in  the  "most  bloody  debate" 

that  followed  he  was  ridiculed  by   "all  the  cy- 

Henry's         phers  of  the  aristocracy."     (Thomas  Jefferson,  a 

Resolutions    young  law  student,   stood  in   the  door,  and  has 

slstance'6'     ^e^    us   n*s   later   recollections   of  the   struggle.) 

Through    the    cordial     support    of    the    western 

counties,   the   resolutions   were   approved.     The   next   day 

the  House,  in  regular  session,  adopted  five  of  them,  though 

only  by  a  majority  of  one  vote.     One  day  later  (the  last 

188 


TEN  YEARS  OF  AGITATION,  1765-1774  189 

day  of  the  session),  Henry  having  started  home,  the  fifth 
resolution  —  the  most  important  of  the  five  —  was  expunged 
from  the  record.  But  meantime  the  whole  seven  had  been 
published  to  the  world ;  and  these  resolutions  "rang  the  alarm 
bell  for  the  continent.9' 

The  sixth  and  seventh  resolutions  (never  really  adopted) 
asserted  that  the  colonists  were  "not  bound  to  yield  obedience" 
to  any  law  that  so  imposed  taxation  upon  them  from  without, 
and  denounced  any  one  who  should  defend  such  taxation  as  an 
"enemy  of  his  majesty's  colony."  These  were  the  clauses  that 
sanctioned  forcible  resistance. 

The  fifth  resolution  declared  that  every  attempt  to  vest  power 
to  tax  the  colonists  in  "  any  persons  whatsoever"  except  the  colonial 
Assemblies  "has  a  manifest  tendency  to  destroy  British  as  well  as 
American  freedom ."  It  was  in  the  debate  upon  this  resolution  that 
Henry  startled  the  House  by  his  famous  warning  from  history. 
"Tarquin  and  Caesar,"  cried  his  thrilling  voice,  "had  each  his 
Brutus ;  Charles  the  First,  his  Cromwell ;  and  George  the  Third" 
—  here  he  was  interrupted  by  cries  of  Treason  !  Treason  !  from 
the  Speaker  and  royalist  members;  but  "rising  to  a  loftier  atti 
tude,"  with  flashing  eye,  the  orator  continued,—  "may  profit 
by  their  example.  If  this  be  treason,  make  the  most  of  it." 

On  the  day  that  Henry  moved  his  resolutions,  the  Massa 
chusetts   Assembly    invited    the   legislatures    of   the   other 
colonies  to  send  "committees"  to  a  general  meet 
ing  at  New  York  in  October.     At  first  the  sug-  Act  " 
gestion  was  ignored  ;  but  in  August  and  September  Congress 
(as  public  feeling  mounted  under  the  stimulus  of 
the  Virginia  resolutions),  colony  after  colony  named  dele 
gates,  and  the  Stamp  Act    Congress  duly  assembled.     Fer 
vently  protesting  loyalty  to  the  crown,  that  meeting  drew 
up  a  noble  Declaration  of  Rights  and  a  group  of  admirable 
addresses  to  king  and  parliament.     It  did  not  directly  sug 
gest  forcible  opposition ;  but  it  helped,  mightily,  to  crystal 
lize  public   opinion,   and  to  give  dignity  to  the  agitation 
against  the  law.     Better  still,  it  prophesied  united  action. 
Christopher  Gadsden,   delegate    from  South   Carolina,  ex 
claimed —  "There  ought  to  be  no  New  England  man,  no 


190  SEPARATION  FROM  ENGLAND 

New   Yorker,    known    on    this    continent;  but    all    of    us, 
Americans." 

Meanwhile,  payment  of  debts  to  British  creditors  was 
generally  suspended,1  and  local  "associations"  pledged 

themselves  to  import  no  British  goods  until  the 
resistance  Act  snould  be  repealed.  Sometimes  these  early 
to  the  law,  Non-Importation  Agreements  directly  threatened 
boycott  violence.  At  a  Westmoreland  County  meeting 

at  Leedstown  (Virginia)  on  February  27,  1766, 
the  following  resolutions  were  unanimously  adopted : 

.  .  .  We,  who  subscribe  this  paper,  have  associated,  and  do 
bind  ourselves  to  each  other,  to  God,  and  to  our  country,  by  the 
firmest  ties  that  religion  and  virtue  can  frame,  most  sacredly  and 
punctually  to  stand  by,  and  with  our  lives  and  fortunes,  to  support, 
maintain,  and  defend  each  other  in  the  observance  and  execution 
of  these  following  articles.  .  .  . 

Thirdly.  As  the  Stamp  Act  does  absolutely  direct  the  property 
of  the  people  to  be  taken  from  them  without  their  consent  ex 
pressed  by  their  representatives,  and  as  in  many  cases  it  deprives 
the  British  American  subject  of  his  right  to  trial  by  jury ;  we  do 
determine,  at  every  hazard,  and,  paying  no  regard  to  danger  or 
to  death,  we  will  exert  every  faculty,  to  prevent  the  execution  of 
the  said  Stamp  Act  in  any  instance  whatsoever  within  this  Colony. 
And  every  abandoned  wretch,  who  shall  be  so  lost  to  virtue  and 
public  good,  as  wickedly  to  contribute  to  the  introduction  or 
fixture  of  the  Stamp  Act  in  this  Colony,  by  using  stampt  paper,  or 
by  any  other  means,  we  will,  with  the  utmost  expedition,  convince 
all  such  profligates  that  immediate  danger  shall  attend  their  prostitute 
purpose. 

Sixthly.  If  any  attempt  shall  be  made  on  the  liberty  or  prop 
erty  of  any  associator  for  any  action  or  thing  to  be  done  in  conse 
quence  of  this  engagement,  we  do  most  solemnly  bind  ourselves 

1  This  method  of  coercing  English  public  opinion  was  renewed  in  the  later 
period  of  this  struggle.  In  1774  George  Washington  wrote  to  a  friend  in  England : 
"As  to  withholding  our  remittances  [payments  of  debts],  that  is  a  point  on  which 
I  own  I  have  my  doubts  on  several  accounts,  but  principally  on  that  of  justice." 


f  yo  f  a4 


vr 


TEN  YEARS  OF  AGITATION,   1765-1774  191 

by  the  sacred  engagements  above  entered  into,  at  the  utmost  risk 
of  our  lives  and  fortunes,  to  restore  such  associate  to  his  liberty, 
and  to  protect  him  in  the  enjoyment  of  his  property. 

This  bold  and  "seditious"  language  was  drawn  up  by 
Richard  Henry  Lee,  and  among  the  115  signers  were  six 
Lees  and   a  Washington.     But   more   commonly  «•  sons  of 
the  violent  resistance  was  taken  care  of  by  secret  Liberty  " 
societies  known  as  Sons  of  Liberty,  which  terrorized   the 
stamp  distributors  and  compelled  hesitating  merchants  to 
obey  the  non-importation  agreements.     In  various  places, 
supporters   of  the  law  were  brutally  handled.     A  Boston 
mob   sacked   the   house 
of  Thomas  Hutchinson ; 
and      Andrew      Oliver, 
stamp     distributor    for 
Massachusetts,  standing 
under     the     "Liberty 
Tree"  (on  which  he  had 
been    hanged    in    effigy 
shortly    before),    was 
forced,  in  the  presence 
of  two  thousand  people, 
to    swear    to   a   solemn 
"recantation     and     de-    A  HANDBILL  s^csu™^ITTYHE  NEW  Y°RK 
testation"  of  his  office 

before  a  justice  of  the  peace.  When  the  day  came  for  the 
law  to  go  into  effect  every  stamp  distributor  on  the  continent 
had  been  "persuaded"  into  resigning,  and  no  stamps  were 
to  be  had.  After  a  short  period  of  hesitation,  the  courts 
opened  as  usual  in  most  of  the  colonies,  newspapers  resumed 
publication,  and  all  forms  of  business  ignored  the  law. 

In  England  the  ministry  had  changed,  and  the  new  gov 
ernment  was   amazed   at  the   uproar  in  the  colonies.     It 
was  deluged,  too,  with  petitions  for  repeal  from  Repealof 
English  merchants,  who  already  felt  the   loss  of  the  stamp 
American  trade ;  and,  after  one  of  the  greatest  of     ct 
parliamentary  debates,  the  Stamp  Act  was  repealed  (March 
17,  1766).     No  serious  attempt  had  been  made  to  enforce 


192 


SEPARATION  FROM  ENGLAND 


it,  and  no  demand  was  made  for  the  punishment  of  the 
rioters.  The  English  government  did  ask  the  colonial  as 
semblies  to  compensate  citizens  who  had  suffered  in  the  riots  ; 
but  even  this  request  was  attended  to  very  imperfectly. 

Within  a  few  months  the  English  ministry  was  changed 
once  more.  Pitt  (now  in  the  Lords)  was  the  head  of  the 
new  government:  and,  excepting  for  Charles  Townshend, 


.  V6f.  THE 

PENNSYLVANIA  JOURNAL. 

A  X  9 

WEEKLY   ADVERTISER. 


EXPIRING.    In  Hop«  of  *  ReAimetion  to  LIFE  again. 


eBurthtn.  hu  (hough*  .1  tip-fceitl 
Iroitor  jwh.U.  inonkrloddiUnU.wlM. 


ilangbrfiJtJHMia,  «W 


AMHM4  «(M*  (h*Y  «MU 
DUMiMj*  if-ir  ?*(>«&<*•  Ar 


A  REDUCED  FACSIMILE,  from  Scharf  and  Wescott's  History  of  Philadelphia.  The 
skull  and  crossbones  take  the  place  of  the  stamp  required  by  law.  This  paper 
resumed  publication  in  one  week  without  stamps. 

all  its  members  were  "friends  of  America."  But  ill-health 
soon  forced  Pitt  to  give  up  the  active  management  of 
affairs,  and  the  brilliant  but  unscrupulous  Townshend, 
backed  by  the  King,  seized  the  leadership  and  turned 
promptly  to  schemes  of  American  taxation. 

In  May,  1767,  Townshend  secured  the  enactment  of 
tariffs  on  glass,  red  and  'white  lead,  paper,  painters'  colors, 
The  Town-  an<^  tea  imported  into  the  colonies.  In  the 
shend  Acts,  Stamp  Act  discussions,  some  Americans  had  ob 
jected  to  the  stamp  duties  as  an  internal  tax. 
Now  Townshend  cynically  professed  his  readiness  to  give 


TEN  YEARS  OF  AGITATION,  1765-1774  193 

them  the  external  taxation  they  preferred.  This  tone  was 
bad  enough  to  a  sensitive  people  flushed  with  recent  vic 
tory  ;  and  two  other  features  made  the  bill  unendurable : 
(1)  Trials  for  attempts  to  evade  the  law  were  to  take  place 
before  admiralty  courts  without  juries ;  and  (2)  the  revenue 
was  appropriated  to  the  payment  of  colonial  governors  and 
judges,  so  as  to  give  the  crown  complete  control  over  such 
officers.  Thus  this  law  began  a  wholly  new  phase  of  the  strug 
gle  with  England.  In  the  Stamp  Act  period  the  honest  pur 
pose  of  the  English  Government  had  been  to  protect  the  colonies, 
not  to  oppress  them.  But  the  Townshend  law  was  a  wanton 
attempt  to  demonstrate  supremacy,  with  no  pretense  of  protect 
ing  America.  "From  this  time,"  says  Lecky,  "the  con 
duct  of  the  government  toward  America  is  little  more  than 
a  series  of  deplorable  blunders." 

Townshend  died  that  same  summer ;  but,  for  three  years, 
his  successor,  Lord  North,  maintained  his  policy.  Mean 
time  the  American  continent  seethed  once  more  And  Lord 
with  pamphlets,  addresses,  and  non-importation  North 
agreements.  Assemblies  denounced  the  law ;  royal  gov 
ernors,  under  strict  instructions,  ordered  them  to  rescind, 
received  defiant  answers,  and  replied  with  messages  of 
dissolution.  Then,  in  the  absence  of  means  for  legal  action, 
the  colonists  turned  again  to  illegal  violence.  Mobs  openly 
landed  goods  that  had  paid  no  tax,  and  sometimes  tarred 
and  feathered  the  customs  officials. 

To  check  such  resistance  to  law,  parliament,  in  1769, 
added  to  its  offenses  by  providing  that  a  colonist,  accused 
of  treason,  might  be  carried  to  England  for  trial,  , 

.      a    ,      i    n  £    ,1  .       .    ?,       v  i          •      .      The  Virginia 

—  in  flat  defiance  ot  the  ancient  English  princi-  Assembly's 
pie  of  trial  by  a  jury  of  the  neighborhood.  This 
threat  roused  Virginia  again.  Virginia  was  still 
the  most  important  colony.  It  had  been  less  affected  by 
the  Townshend  regulations  than  the  commercial  colonies 
had  been ;  and  the  ministry  had  been  particularly  gentle 
toward  it,  hoping  to  draw  it  away  from  the  rest  of  America. 
But  now  the  Assembly  unanimously  adopted  resolutions 
denouncing  both  the  Townshend  law  and  this  recent  attack 


194 


SEPARATION  FROM  ENGLAND 


TEN  YEARS  OF  AGITATION,   1765-1774  195 

on  jury  trial  as  unconstitutional  and  tyrannical.  Nicholas, 
one  of  the  Virginia  leaders,  declared  that  the  new  law  was 
"fraught  with  worse  evils  than  the  Stamp  Act,  by  as  much 
as  life  is  more  precious  than  property"  ;  and  George  Wash 
ington  affirmed  that  it  touched  a  matter  "on  which  no  one 
ought  to  hesitate  to  take  up  arms." 

The  governor  punished  the  House  by  peremptory  disso 
lution.1  But  other  Assemblies  copied  the  Virginia  resolu 
tions  or  adopted  similar  ones ;  and  non-importation  agree 
ments,  enforced  by  semi-revolutionary  committees,  became 
nearly  universal. 

During  this  turmoil,  came  the  Boston  "Massacre."     Two 
regiments  of  British  regulars  had  been  sent  to  Boston,  in 
the  fall  of  1768,  to  overawe  that  turbulent  com-  Thg  Bogton 
munity.     This   quartering  of   soldiery   upon  the  "Massa- 
town  in  time  of  peace,  not  for  protection,  but  for  ^'^h  mo 
intimidation,  was  one  more  infringement  of  fun 
damental  English  liberties.     Incessant  bickerings  followed. 
Town  officials  quarreled  with  the  royal  governor ;  and   the 
townspeople  and  the   soldiers   squabbled  and  indulged  in 
fisticuffs  in  the  streets.     The  troops  were  subjected  to  con 
stant  and  bitter  insult ;  and  on  the  evening  of  March  5, 
1770,  came  the  long-delayed  collision.     Soldiers  and  people 
had  been  called  into  the   streets  by  an  alarm  of   fire.     Va 
rious  fracases  occurred.     In  particular,  a  sentinel  on  duty 

1  Whereon,  continues  the  Journals  of  the  House,  "the  late  representatives  of 
the  people,  judging  it  necessary  that  some  Measures  should  be  taken  in  their  dis 
tressed  Situation  .  .  .  resolved  upon  a  Meeting  for  that  very  salutary  purpose, 
and  therefore,  immediately,  with  the  greatest  Order  and  Decorum,  repaired  to  the 
house  of  Mr.  Anthony  Hay."  Then  the  late  Speaker  was  chosen  "Moderator," 
and,  after  due  consideration,  the  gathering  unanimously  "recommended"  to  the 
colony  a  long  and  detailed  non-importation  association,  drawn  by  George  Mason, 
supported  by  George  Washington,  and  signed  at  once  by  the  89  ex-Burgesses 
present.  The  Journal  entry  closes  with  the  following  delicious  passage :  — 

"The  business  being  finished,  the  following  TOASTS  were  drank:  — 

The  KING, 

The  QUEEN  and  ROYAL  FAMILY. 

His  Excellency  Lord  BOTETOURT  [Governor],  and  Prosperity  to  VIRGINIA. 

The  speedy  and  lasting  Union  between  Great  Britain  and  her  Colonies. 

The  constitutional  British  Liberty  in  America,  and  all  true  Patriots,  Supporters 
thereof." 


196  SEPARATION  FROM  ENGLAND 

was  pelted  with  epithets  and  snowballs.  Six  or  seven  of 
his  companions,  under  an  officer,  came  to  his  rescue.  One 
of  them,  hit  by  a  club,  shot  an  assailant,  and  immediately 
the  rest  of  the  squad,  believing  an  order  to  fire  had  been 
given,  discharged  a  volley  into  the  crowd.  Five  persons 
were  killed  and  six  injured. 

The  next  day,  on  the  demand  of  a  crowded  town  meeting, 
and  as  the  only  way  to  prevent  an  organized  attack  by  the 
citizens  upon  the  troops,  Governor  Hutchinson  removed 
the  regiments  to  a  fort  in  the  harbor.  The  troops  had  be 
haved  well  for  many  months,  under  intense  provocation, 
and  are  not  seriously  to  be  blamed.  The  mob,  no  doubt, 
deserved  blame.  But  the  chief  condemnation  falls  upon 
the  British  ministry,  which  had  deliberately  created  the 
situation  that  made  this  "Massacre"  inevitable.  Some 
months  later,  the  soldiers  were  tried  before  a  Boston  jury. 
John  Adams  and  Josiah  Quincy,  leading  patriots,  volun 
teered  as  their  counsel,  risking  gallantly  their  popularity 
and  influence.  Two  of  the  soldiers  were  punished  lightly ; 
the  rest  were  acquitted. 

The   Townshend  Acts  were  a  failure.     They  had  driven 

the  colonies  to  the  verge  of  rebellion.     Each  penny  collected 

under    them    had    cost    the    English    treasury    a 

Failure  i    «IT  i       T-\         T    i  i  rv       • 

of  the  shilling,    and    English    merchants   were    suffering 

Townshend  keenly  from  the  colonial  non-importation  policy. 
On  the  day  of  the  Boston  Massacre,  Lord  North 
moved  the  repeal,  except  for  the  insignificant  tax  on  tea, 
giving  notice  also  that  the  government  would  lay  no 
more  taxes  in  America.  The  tea  tax  was  kept,  at  the 
King's  insistence,  —  to  mark  the  principle  of  parliamentary 
supremacy. 

But  instead  of  seeking  real  reconciliation,  the  British 
ministry  took  just  this  time  to  hector  the  various  colonial 
Continued  Assemblies  by  arbitrary  "orders"  on  many  differ- 
friction  ent  subjects.  When  the  Assemblies  protested, 
the  governors,  under  strict  instructions,  dissolved  them; 
and  at  other  times  the  usual  liberties  of  the  Assemblies, 


TEN  YEARS  OF  AGITATION,   1765-1774  197 

such  as  the  choice  of  Speaker  and  place  of  meeting,  were 
needlessly  infringed. 

During  these  disorders,  America  learned  to  organize  itself 
in   a   semi-revolutionary   manner.       Committees   of   corre 
spondence  here  and  there  had  been  a  familiar  f ea-  The  be_ 
ture  of  the  agitation ;  but  now  standing  commit-  ginning  of 
tees  took   the    place  of  the  old   legal  Assemblies  ^gl^-" 
and  town  meetings.     On  the  motion  of  Samuel  zationinthe 
Adams,  in  November,  1772,  a  Boston  town  meet- 
ing  appointed  a  committee  of  twenty-one  to  main-  and  the 
tain   correspondence   with   the   other    towns  of  the  ^^etts 
province  upon  the  infringements  of  their  liberties,  com- 
Some  such  device  was  made  necessary  by  the  fact  E 
that  the  Massachusetts  Assembly  was  no  longer  free.     The 
two  hundred  towns  responded  promptly  by  appointing  simi 
lar  committees,  and  soon  a  vigorous  correspondence  was 
going  on  throughout  this  complicated  network. 

Samuel  Adams,  "the  man  of  the  Town-Meeting,"  was  the 
first  American  political  "bqss,"  in  the  better  sense  of  the 
word.  He  played  with  unfailing  skill  upon  the  many 
strings  of  the  town  meeting,  working  his  will  through  com 
mittees  and  faithful  lieutenants.  He  has  been  called  "the 
wedge  that  split  England  and  America  asunder."  Dr. 
Howard  says  of  him  (Preliminaries  of  the  Revolution)  :  — 

"He  possessed  precisely  the  qualities  which  belong  to  a  con 
summate  revolutionary  leader.  The  very  narrowness  of  view 
which  often  prevented  him  from  seeing  the  merits  of  his  adver 
saries  only  added  to  this  power.  He  had  unbounded  faith  in 
democratic  self-government  .  .  .  and  was  almost  fanatical  in  his 
zeal  for  constitutional  liberty.  He  had  indomitable  will,  great 
tenacity  of  purpose,  and  unflinching  courage.  .  .  .  He  was  poor 
in  worldly  goods,  simple  in  manner  and  dress,  and  able  to  enter 
sympathetically  into  the  thoughts  and  feelings  of  plain  men. 
Much  of  his  power  lay  in  his  ability  to  persuade  and  lead  the 
fishermen,  rope-makers,  and  ship-masters  of  Boston.  .  .  .  [He] 
had  a  rare  talent  for  practical  politics.  He  displayed  a  capacity 
for  organization,  sometimes  lapsing  into  intrigue,  and  a  foresight 
sometimes  sinking  into  cunning." 


colonial 
union 


198  SEPARATION  FROM  ENGLAND 

After  all,  each  colony  was  fairly  certain,  sooner  or  later, 
to  find  a  way  to  express  itself  through  some  revolutionary 
organization.  It  was  not  so  certain  that  the  thir- 
amfthe  ^een  colonies  could  be  united  by  revolutionary 
germ  of  machinery.  Here  the  first  step  was  taken  by 
Virginia.  The  occasion  arose  out  of  the  burning 
of  the  Gaspee,  a  revenue  schooner  off  the  Rhode 
Island  coast  —  whose  commander  had  become  extremely 
obnoxious  to  the  colony.  In  pursuit  of  a  smuggler's 
boat,  the  Gaspee  ran  aground.  It  was  then  boarded  by 
an  armed  mob,  led  by  a  prominent  merchant.  The  com 
mander  was  shot,  the  crew  put  on  shore,  and  the  vessel 
burned.  The  English  government  created  a  special  com 
mission  to  secure  the  offenders  for  trial  in  England.  But, 
though  the  actors  were  well  known  to  large  numbers  of 
people,  no  evidence  against  them  could  be  secured ;  and, 
indeed,  Stephen  Hopkins,  Chief  Justice  of  the  colony, 
declared  he  would  commit  to  prison  any  officer  who  should 
attempt  to  remove  a  citizen  from  the  limits  of  the  com 
monwealth. 

Meantime,  as  in  1769,  the  attempt  to  send  Americans  to 
England  for  trial  called  forth  ringing  resolutions  from  the 
Virginia  Assembly  (March  12,  1773).  But  this  time  the 
Assembly  did  more  than  pass  resolutions.  It  appointed  a 
standing  committee  for  intercolonial  correspondence,  and  by 
formal  letter  invited  all  other  Assemblies  in  America  to  ap 
point  similar  means  of  intercourse.  Within  three  months, 
committees  had  been  set  up  in  half  the  colonies,  and  ere 
long  the  machinery  was  complete.  July  2,  the  New  Hamp 
shire  Gazette  said  of  this  movement :  "  The  Union  of  the 
Colonies  which  is  now  taking  place  is  big  with  the  most 
important  Advantages  to  this  Continent.  .  .  .  Let  it  be 
the  study  of  all  to  make  the  Union  firm  and  perpetual,  as  it 
will  be  the  great  Basis  for  Liberty  and  every  public  Bless 
ing  in  America." 

The  next  step  toward  revolutionary  government  was  to 
develop  from  the  local  committees  a  Provincial  Congress, 


TEN  YEARS  OF  AGITATION,  1765-1774  199 

in  colony  after  colony,  and  from  the  intercolonial  committees 
of  the  continent  a  Continental  Congress.     This  came  about 
in  the  summer  and  fall  of  1774,  as  the  result  of  Local  com_ 
three   events,  —  the   attempt  of  the  ministry  to  mittees 
force  taxed  tea  down   the   throats    of   the    colo- 
nists,  the  answer  of  the  Boston  Tea  Party,  and  Con- 
the    punishment    of    Boston    by    the    Port    Bill.  sresses" 

Ever  since  the  repeal  of  the  other  Townshend  duties  the 
animosities  of  the  conflict  had  been  focused   on   the  one 
taxed  article,  tea.     Says  Moses  Coit  Tyler  at  the 
close  of  a  delightful  summary  (Literary  History  of 
the  American  Revolution,  I,  246-253)  : 

"The  latent  comedy  of  the  situation  flashes  upon  us  now  from 
the  grostesque  prominence  then  given,  in  the  politics  of  the  British 
empire,  to  this  coy  and  peace-loving  tea  plant.  By  a  sort  of 
sarcasm  of  fate,  it  happened  that  between  the  years  1770  and  1775, 
this  ministress  of  gentleness  and  peace,  —  this  homelike,  dainty, 
and  consolatory  herb  of  Cathay,  —  came  to  be  regarded,  both  in 
America  and  England,  as  the  one  active  and  malignant  cause  of 
nearly  all  the  ugly  and  disastrous  business.  .  .  .  The  innocent 
shrub  .  .  .  seldom  receives  in  our  literature  for  those  years  any 
less  lurid  description  than  .  .  .  *  pestilential  herb.'  Just  south 
of  the  Potomac,  a  much-excited  young  woman,  addicted,  as  she 
supposed,  to  poetry  as  well  as  to  politics,  sent  forth  to  the  world 
a  number  of  stanzas  entitled  *  Virginia  Banishing  Tea,'  wherein 
that  valorous  colony  exclaims,  - 

'Begone,  pernicious,  baleful  Tea, 
With  all  Pandora's  ills  possessed ; 
Hyson,  no  more  beguiled  by  thee 
My  noble  sons  shall  be  oppressed.' 

Tory  punsters,  on  the  other  hand,  were  inclined  to  liken  the  whole 
disturbance  to  *a  tempest  in  a  teapot. ": 

For  six  years  the  colonists,  for  the  most  part,  had  done 
without    that    luxury  —  except    for    the    smuggled    article. 
In  April  of  1773  Lord  North  tried  an  appeal   to  And  Lord 
American  avarice.     Tea  paid  a  tax  of  a  shilling  North's 
a    pound  on   reaching    England,    and,  under   the  l 
Townshend    Act,    threepence    more    on    importation    into 


200  SEPARATION  FROM  ENGLAND 

America.  Parliament  now  arranged  that  a  rebate  of  the 
English  tax  (and  of  some  other  burdens)  should  be  given  the 
Tea  Company  on  tea  reexported  to  America,  —  so  that  the 
colonists  would  pay  the  threepence  tax,  and  would  still  get 
their  tea  cheaper  than  Englishmen  could,  —  and  cheaper 
than  it  could  be  smuggled.  Ships  loaded  with  this  gross 
bait  were  at  once  dispatched  to  the  chief  American  ports. 
But  everywhere,  by  forcible  resistance,  the  colonists  kept 
the  tea  out  of  the  market.  At  Charleston  it  was  stored  for 
Resistance  years,  until  seized  by  the  Revolutionary  govern- 
to  the  land-  ment  in  1776.  At  New  York,  Annapolis,  and 
Philadelphia,  mobs  frightened  the  governors  or 
the  ship  captains  into  sending  back  the  tea  ships  without 
breaking  cargo.  A  tea  ship  was  expected  at  Philadelphia 
in  September.  The  "Liberty  Boys"  of  that  city  distribu 
ted  a  handbill  among  the  Delaware  pilots :  — 

"...  We  need  not  point  out  the  steps  you  ought  to  take  if  the 
tea  ship  falls  in  your  way.  .  .  .  This  you  may  depend  upon,  — 
that  whatever  pilot  brings  her  into  the  river,  such  pilot  will  be 
marked  for  his  treason.  .  .  .  Like  Cain,  he  will  be  hung  out  as  a 
spectacle  to  the  nations  ...  as  the  damned  traitorous  pilot  who 
brought  up  the  tea  ship.  .  .  . 
(Signed)  THE  COMMITTEE  FOR  TARRING  AND  FEATHERING." 

Another  broadside  was  addressed  to  the  captain  of  the  ex 
pected  ship  :  • — • "  What  think  you,  Captain,  of  a  Halter 
round  your  Neck,  ten  gallons  of  liquid  Tar  decanted  on 
your  Pate,  with  the  feathers  of  a  dozen  wild  Geese  laid 
over  that,  to  enliven  your  appearance."  All  this  was 
weeks  before  the  Boston  episode.  The  Philadelphia  ship, 
however,  did  not  arrive  at  the  mouth  of  the  river  until 
four  or  five  days  after  the  Boston  Tea  Party ;  and  it  then 
sailed  back  to  England  without  trying  to  reach  the  city. 

In  Boston  the  "Tories"  were  made  of  sterner  stuff,  and 
the  clash  was  more  serious.  Governor  Hutchinson  had 
stationed  warships  in  the  channel  to  prevent  the  timid 
owner  of  three  tea  vessels  from  sending  them  away;  and 
the  customs  officials  prepared  to  land  the  tea  by  a  force 


TEN  YEARS  OF  AGITATION,   1765-1774  201 

of    marines   as   soon   as   the   legal   interval   should   expire. 
(Ships  were  allowed   to  remain  only   twenty  days  in  the 
harbor   without    unloading.)      Boston   exhausted  The  Boston 
all  means  but  actual  violence,  —  and  then  used  pTea,, 
that  so  skillfully  as  to  avoid  bloodshed.     At  the  December 
last    moment,    a    town    meeting    resolved    itself  16> 1773 
into   a   band   of   Mohawks    ("with   whom,"   says    Carlyle, 
"Sam  Adams  could  speak  without  an  interpreter"),  and, 
seizing  the  vessels  before  they  passed  into  the  hands  of  the 
officials,  emptied  into  Boston  harbor  some  ninety  thousand 
dollars'  worth  of  tea  (December  16,  1773). 

The  short-sighted  English  government  replied  with  a 
series  of  "repressive  acts"  1  to  punish  Massachusetts.  Town 
meetings  were  forbidden,  except  as  authorized  in  writing  by 
the  governor,  and  for  business  specified  by  him.  All  courts, 
high  and  low,  with  all  their  officials,  were  made  absolutely 
dependent  upon  his  appointing  and  removing  power.  So 
far  as  the  election  of  the  Council  was  concerned,  the  charter 
of  1691  was  set  aside,  and  the  appointment  given  to  the 
crown.  Most  effective  in  rousing  American  indignation 
was  another  act  of  this  series,  the  Boston  Port  And  the 
Bill,  which  closed  the  port  of  Boston  to  com-  Boston  Port 
merce,  with  provision  for  a  blockade  by  ships  of 
war.  Since  the  entire  population  depended,  directly  or 
indirectly,  upon  commerce  for  their  living,  the  town  was 
threatened  with  starvation.  Food  and  fuel  at  once  became 
scarce  and  costly,  and  great  numbers  of  men  were  unem 
ployed.  But  all  parts  of  America  joined  in  sending  money 
and  supplies.  South  Carolina  gave  cargoes  of  rice ;  Phila 
delphia  gave  a  thousand  barrels  of  flour ;  from  Connecticut 
came  Israel  Putnam  driving  before  him  his  flock  of  sheep. 

1  Classed  with  these  acts,  in  the  minds  of  the  colonists,  was  the  Quebec  Act 
which  was;  passed  at  the  same  time.  This  legalized  the  Catholic  religion,  and 
restored  part  of  the  French  law,  for  Canada.  The  design  was  to  conciliate  the 
French  settlers  (almost  the  sole  population),  and  to  set  up  some  authority  to  deal 
with  the  existing  anarchy  in  the  fur-trade  regions.  No  act  of  the  series,  however, 
caused  more  bitter  suspicion  among  the  English  colonies,  with  their  bigoted  fear 
of  Catholicism.  The  same  act  extended  "Quebec"  to  include  the  unsettled  dis 
trict  west  of  the  mountains  between  the  Great  Lakes  and  the  Ohio. 


202  SEPARATION  FROM  ENGLAND 

May  12,  two  days  after  the  arrival  of  the  news  of  the 
"Intolerable  Acts,"  the  committees  of  eight  near-by  towns 
met  at  Boston.  This  gathering  sent  letters  to  the  corre 
spondence  committees  of  the  thirteen  colonies  suggesting 
that  all  America  should  "consider  Boston  as  suffering  in 
the  common  cause,  and  resent  the  injury  inflicted  upon  her.'' 
^e  ^rst  official  response  came  from  Virginia, 
May  24,  1774,  the  House  of  Burgesses  set  apart 
continental  june  i  (wnen  the  Port  Bill  was  to  go  into  effect) 

congress  (t  J;  ,    ^        .          TT         -i-    ,•  i  T> 

as  a  Day  ot  lasting,  Humiliation,  and  Prayer, 
devoutly  to  implore  the  divine  interposition  for  averting 
the  heavy  Calamity  which  threatens  Destruction  to  our 
Civil  Rights,  and  the  Evils  of  civil  War,  and  to  give  us  one 
heart  and  one  Mind  firmly  to  oppose  by  all  just  and  proper 
means  every  injury  to  American  Rights."  Two  days  later 
the  governor  dissolved  the  Assembly  with  sharp  rebuke. 

On  the  following  day,  as  on  the  like  occasion  five  years  be 
fore  (page  194),  the  ex-Burgesses  met  at  the  Raleigh  Tavern, 
and  recommended  an  annual  congress  of  delegates  from  all  the 
colonies  "to  deliberate  on  those  general  measures  which  tho 
united  interests  of  America  may  from  time  to  time  require. !? 
Here  was  a  suggestion  for  permanent  continental  revolutionary 
government.  A  second  meeting  of  the  ex-Burgesses,  on  May 
31,  called  a  Convention  of  deputies  from  Virginia 
Virginia  counties,  to  meet  at  Williamsburg  on  August  1, 
. Conven"  in  order  to  appoint  Virginia  delegates  for  the  pro 
posed  continental  congress  and  to  consider  a  plaiv 
for  non-intercourse  with  England.  During  June  and  July 
the  Virginia  counties,  from  the  Blue  Ridge  to  the  Sea, 
ratified  this  call  in  county  courts,  by  authorizing  their  ex- 
Burgesses  to  act  for  them  at  the  proposed  Convention,  OK 
by  choosing  new  representatives  to  do  so.  Here  were  the 
germs  of  revolutionary  machinery  for  county  and  state. 

The  records  of  thirty-one  of  these  Virginia  county  meet- 
The  county  ^nSs  nave  been  preserved.  In  all  of  them  resolu- 
meetingsin  tions  were  adopted,  in  the  nature  of  instruc- 
Virgima  tions  to  the  county's  delegates  to  the  coming 
Virginia  Convention.  Many  of  these  documents  are  great 


BEGINNINGS  OF  REVOLUTIONARY  GOVERNMENTS     203 

state  papers,  equal  in  logic  and  rhetoric  to  those  put  forth 
three  months  later  by  the  Continental  Congress  at  Phila 
delphia.  Typical  in  sentiment  and  language  are  the  Fair 
fax  County  resolutions  of  July  18  (George  Washington 
presiding)  —  of  which  perhaps  a  twentieth  part  follows  :  — 

"  Resolved  .  .  .  that  our  ancestors  .  .  .  brought  with  them, 
even  if  the  same  had  not  been  confirmed  by  Charters,  the  civil 
Constitution  and  form  of  Government  of  the  country  they  came 
from,  and  were  by  the  laws  of  nature  and  Nations  entitled  to  all 
its  privileges,  immunities,  and  advantages,  which  have  descended 
to  us,  their  posterity  .  .  . 

"  Resolved,  That  the  most  important  and  valuable  part  of  the 
British  Constitution,  upon  which  its  very  existence  depends,  is 
(the  fundamental  principle  of  the  people's  being  governed  by  no 
laws  to  which  they  have  not  given  their  consent  by  Representatives 
freely  chosen  by  themselves,  who  are  affected  by  the  laws  they  enact 
equally  with  their  constituents,  to  whom  they  are  accountable  and 
whose  burthens  they  share  .  .  . 

"  Resolved,  That  the  claim  lately  assumed  by  the  British 
Parliament,  for  making  all  such  laws  as  they  think  fit  to  govern  the 
people  of  these  Colonies,  and  to  extort  from  us  our  money  with- 
but  our  consent,  ...  is  totally  incompatible  with  the  privileges 
of  a  free  people  and  the  natural  rights  of  mankind  .  .  . 

"  Resolved,  That  taxation  and  representation  are  in  their  nature 
inseparable  ;  that  the  right  of  withholding,  or  of  giving  and  grant 
ing  their  own  money,  is  the  only  effectual  security  to  a  free  people 
against  the  encroachments  of  despotism  and  tyranny  .  .  . 

"  Resolved,  That  the  powers  over  the  people  of  America,  now 
claimed  by  the  British  House  of  Commons,  —  in  whose  election 
\ve  have  no  share;  in  whose  determinations  we  have  no  influence; 
whose  information  must  be  always  defective,  and  often  false;  who 
in  many  instances  may  have  a  separate,  and  in  some  an  opposite 
interest  to  ours;  and  who  are  removed  from  those  impressions  of 
tenderness  and  compassion,  arising  from  personal  intercourse  and 
connection,  which  soften  the  rigours  of  the  most  despotick  Govern 
ment,  must,  if  continued,  establish  the  most  grievous  and  intoler 
able  species  of  tyranny  and  oppression  that  ever  was  inflicted 
Upon  mankind." 

The  document  goes  on  to  declare  that  "all  manner  of 
luxury  and  extravagance  ought  immediately  to  be  laid 


204  SEPARATION  FROM  ENGLAND 

aside ' '  (horse  racing  is  especially  denounced  in  several  coun 
ties  as  a  form  of  "dissipation  inconsistent  with  the  gloomy 
prospect  before  us");  that  men  of  fortune  "ought  to  set 
examples  of  temperance  and  frugality" ;  that,  to  encourage 
the  wool  industry  (for  supplies  of  domestic  clothing)  "those 
who  have  large  stocks  of  sheep  [should]  sell  to  their  neighbors 
at  a  moderate  price" ;  and  that  "merchants  and  vendors  of 
goods  ought  not  to  take  advantage  of  our  present  distress 
but  continue  to  sell  the  merchandize  they  now  have  ...  at 
the  same  prices  they  have  been  accustomed  to,"  with  sinister 
suggestion  as  to  what  might  happen  to  said  vendors  if  this 
advice  were  neglected.  Many  counties  with  studied  econ 
omy  of  phrase  except  from  the  non-importation  agreement 
saltpeter  and  sulphur,  as  "articles  of  increasing  necessity." 

On  the  suggestion  from  Virginia,   all  the  colonies  but 

Georgia  chose  delegates  to  a  congress,  to  meet  September 

1  at  Philadelphia.     We   know  this  "First  Conti- 

Contfnentai    Cental   Congress"  of  1774  only  from  letters  and 

Congress,       later  recollections  of  some  of   its  members  and 

September,    from  imperfect  notes  taken  at  the  time  by  two 

or  three  delegates.     It  sat  six  weeks,  and  was  a 

notable  gathering,  —  although  forty  years  afterwards  John 

Adams  described  it  as  "one  third  Tories,  one  third  Whigs 

and  the  rest  Mongrels." 

The  Moderate  party  (Adams'  "Tories")  desired  still  to 
use  only  constitutional  agitation  to  secure  redress  of  griev 
ances.  This  element  was  led  by  Joseph  Galloway  of  Penn 
sylvania,  supported  by  John  Jay  of  New  York  and  Edward 
Rutledge  of  South  Carolina.  The  Radicals  insisted  that, 
as  a  prelude  to  reconciliation  with  England,  the  ministry 
must  remove  its  troops  and  repeal  its  acts.  After  strenu 
ous  debate,  Galloway's  proposals  were  rejected  by  a  vote 
of  six  colonies  to  five.  The  Congress  then  recommended 
the  Radical  plan  of  a  huge  universal  boycott,  in  the  form 
of  a  solemn  Association.  The  signers  were  to  bind  them 
selves  neither  to  import  any  British  goods  nor  to  export 
their  own  products  to  Great  Britain.  To  enforce  this  agree- 


THE  FIRST  CONTINENTAL  CONGRESS,  1774         205 

ment,  efficient  machinery  was  recommended.  Every  town 
and  county  was  advised  to  choose  a  committee,  acting 
under  the  supervision  of  the  central  committee  of  its  prov 
ince,  "to  observe  the  conduct  of  all  persons,"  and  to  have 
all  violations  "published  in  the  gazette,"  that  the  foes  to 
the  rights  of  America  might  be  "universally  contemned." 
Both  content  and  language  of  the  great  Act  are  modeled 
closely  upon  the  Virginia  Convention's  resolutions  —  which, 
in  turn,  followed  closely  the  Fairfax  County  resolutions 
quoted  above. 

The  "First  Continental  Congress"  was  not  a  legislature  or  a 
government.  The  name  "congress"  was  used  to  indicate 
its  informal  character.  No  governing  body  had  Not  a  "  gov- 
ever  held  that  name.  It  was  a  meeting  for  con-  ernn*ent " 
sultation.  It  claimed  no  authority  to  do  more  than  advise 
and  recommend.  The  delegates  had  been  elected  in  exceed 
ingly  informal  fashion,  —  by  a  part  of  a  legislature,  called 
together  perhaps  in  an  irregular  way ;  or  by  a  committee 
of  correspondence ;  or  by  a  mass  meeting  of  some  small  part 
of  a  colony,  claiming  to  speak  for  the  whole ;  or,  in  six  colo 
nies,  by  a  new  sort  of  gatherings  known  as  provincial  con 
ventions,  similar  to  that  in  Virginia  (above).  None  of  this 
first  series  of  provincial  conventions  sat  more  than  five  or 
six  days  (most  of  them  only  for  a  day)  :  and  none  took 
any  action  except  to  appoint  delegates  to  Philadelphia  and 
to  instruct  them,  —  except  that  one  or  two  provided  for 
a  second  convention,  to  be  held  after  the  Continental 
Congress. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE    AMERICAN   REVOLUTION 

I.   FROM  COLONIES  TO   COMMONWEALTHS,   1775-1776 

THE  Assemblies  of  New  York  and  Georgia  refused  to 
ratify  the  recommendations  of  the  Continental  Congress. 
But  within  six  months  all  other  colonies  had  adopted  the 
Association  —  either  by  their  regular  Assemblies  or  by 
"conventions";  and  everywhere  "committees  of  public 
safety"  and  mobs  were  terrorizing  reluctant  individuals 
into  signing.  Tar  and  feathers  and  "the  birch  seal"  be 
came  common  means  of  persuasion ;  and  Moderates  com 
plained  bitterly  that,  in  the  name  of  liberty,  the  populace 
denied  all  liberty  of  speech  or  action.  A  great  revolution, 
however  righteous,  is  sure  to  have  its  ugly  phases. 

The  issue  had  changed.  The  question,  now,  was  not 
approval  or  disapproval  of  parliamentary  taxation,  but 
whether  resistance  should  be  forcible.  The  radical  "Pa 
triots"  were  probably  a  minority;  but  they  were  aggres 
sive  and  organized,  and  eventually  they  whipped  into  line 
the  great  body  of  timid  and  indifferent  people.  On  the 
other  hand,  many  earnest  "Patriots"  of  the  preceding 
period  now  became  "Tories"  from  repugnance  to  armed 
rebellion  or  to  mob  rule.  Even  John  Adams  was  seriously 
disturbed  by  the  glee  of  a  horse-jockey  client  at  the  clos 
ing  of  the  courts.  In  the  few  cities  the  revolutionary  move 
ment  fell  largely  to  the  democratic  artisan  class.  June 
1,  1774,  the  governor  of  New  York,  writing  to  the  English 
government  on  the  excitement  about  the  Boston  Port  Bill, 
says :  - 

"The  Men  who  call'd  themselves  the  Committee  [in  New  York] 
—  who  acted  and  dictated  in  the  name  of  the  People  —  were 

206 


FROM  COLONIES  TO  COMMONWEALTHS 


207 


many  of  them  of  the  lower  Rank,  and  all  the  warmest  zealots.  .  .  . 
The  more  considerable  Merchants  and  Citizens  seldom  or  never 
appeared  among  them,  but,  I  believe,  were  not  displeased  with 
the  Clamor  and  opposition  that  was  shown  against  internal 
Taxation  by  Parliament." 

In  the  winter  and 
spring  of  1775,  regular 
legal  government  broke 
down.  In  colony  after 
colony,  the  governors 
refused  to  let  the  legis 
lature  meet,  and  the 
people  refused  to  let 
the  governors'  courts  or 
other  officials  act.  Then 
in  marly  places,  to  pre 
vent  absolute  lawless 
ness,  county  meetings 
or  local  committees  set 
up  some  sort  of  pro 
visional  government,  to 
last  until  "the  restora 
tion  of  harmony  with 
Great  Britain."  Action 
of  this  kind  in  Meck 
lenburg  County,  North 
Carolina,  on  May  30,  1775,  through  distorted  recollections, 
gave  rise  years  later  to  the  legend  of  a  Mecklenburg 
"Declaration  of  Independence"  on  May  20. 

1  A  statue  by  Daniel  Chester  French  at  Concord  Bridge.     On  one  face  of  the 
base  is  inscribed  a  stanza  from  Emerson's  "Concord  Hymn"  :  — 


THE  CONCORD  MINUTE  MAN.1 


Here  once  the  embattled  farmers  stood 
And  fired  the  shot  heard  round  the  world. 

Across  the  stream,  in  a  curve  of  the  stone  fence,  is  the  grave  of  two  British 
soldiers,  over  whose  dust  have  been  carved  the  lines  from  Lowell :  — 

They  came  three  thousand  miles  and  died, 
To  keep  the  Past  upon  its  throne. 


208 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 


During  this  turbulent  disorder,  second  provincial  conven 
tions  were  held  in  several  colonies,  to  act  upon  the  recom 
mendations  of    the  First  Continental    Congress. 
Of  course  the  "Tories"  had  refused  to  pay  any 

elections,  and  in  some 
cases,  indeed,  they  were  excluded  from  voting  by 


govern 
ments 


A  second 
group  of 
provincial  , .  tt  M1 

conventions    attention   to  the     illegal 

become 

test  oaths.     Some  of  these  conventions  now  became 
de  facto    governments.      They    organized    troops, 
raised    money,   and   assumed   civil   powers  far   enough   to 

_  alleviate     the     existing 

anarchy.  In  form,  their 
acts  were  still  recom 
mendations;  but  the  lo 
cal  committees  enforced 
them  as  law. 

These  second  conven 
tions  in  most  of  the 
colonies  appointed  dele 
gates  to  the  Second 
Continental  Congress. 
Between  the  election  of 
that  body  and  its  meet 
ing  (May  10),  General 
Gage,  commander  of  the 
British  troops  in  Boston, 
tried  to  seize  Massa 
chusetts  military  stores  at  Concord,  —  and  so  called  from 
Lexington  "embattled  farmers"  "the  shot  heard  round  the 
and  Concord  world"  (April  19, 1775).  Gage  had  sown  dragon's 
teeth.  From  New  England's  soil  twenty  thousand  volun 
teers  sprang  up  to  besiege  him  in  Boston. 

In  consequence,  the  Second  Continental  Congress  swiftly 
Second  became  a  government,  to  manage  the  continental 
Continental  revolution ;  and,  during  the  summer,  a  third  lot 
becomes8 a  °^  provincial  conventions  openly  avowed  them- 
continentai  selves  governments  for  their  respective  colonies, 
-  appointing  committees  of  safety  (in  place  of 
the  royal  governors,  who  had  been  set  aside  or  driven 


THE  CONCORD  FIGHT  —  the  painting  by  Sim 
mons  in  the  Boston  State  House.     Cf  •  p.  165. 


FROM  COLONIES  TO  COMMONWEALTHS 


209 


out),  and  themselves  assuming  even  the  forms  of  legislative 
bodies. 

The  members  of  the  Second  Continental  Congress,  like 
those  of  the  First,  had  been  elected,  not  as  a  legislature, 
but  to  formulate  opinion,  and  to  report  their  recommendations 
back  to  their  colonies  for  approval.  The  war  changed  all 
that.  A  central  govern 
ment  was  imperative; 
and  the  patriot  party 
everywhere  recognized 
the  Congress  as  the 
only  agent  to  fill  that 
place. 

For  the  first  five 
weeks,  that  body  con 
tinued  to  pass  recom 
mendations  only.  But 
June  15  it  adopted  the 
irregular  forces  about 
Boston  as  a  continental 
army,  and  appointed 
George  Washington 
commander  in  chief.  A 
year  later  it  proclaimed 
the  Declaration  of  In 
dependence.  Between  THE  WASHINGTON  ELM  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  From 

these  two  events  it  cre 
ated  a  navy,  opened 
negotiations  with  foreign 
states,  issued  bills  of 
credit  on  the  faith  of 
the  colonies,  and  took 
over  (from  the  old  English  control)  the  management  of 
Indian  affairs  and  of  the  crude  post  office. 

Thirteen 

But   the   Revolution   in    government   was   not  ''.rev?fu~ 

•   IP         •  r<  tions 

one  movement.     It  was  a  whirl  of  thirteen  State 
revolutions  within   this  Continental   revolution.     The  de 


a  photograph  taken  in  1895.     The  inscrip 
tion  runs :  — 

Under  this  tree 

Washington 
first  took  command 

of  the 

American  army 
July  3,  1775. 


210  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

velopment  of  the  State  government  of  Virginia  is  fairly 
typical. 

County  gatherings  in  that  Province  in  December  and 
January  (1774-1775)  approved  the  Continental  Congress 

Vir  inia  &U^  Set  UP  tnC  Association,  SO    that  a    Second  COn- 

passes  from    vention  was   not  necessary  until   it  came   time  to 

colony  to       appoint  delegates  to  the  Second  Continental  Con- 
common-  •»*-..  ,  •  ,  i    • 
wealth:         gress.     Meantime,  many  counties,  on   their  own 

a  typical  initiative,  organized  and  armed  a  revolutionary  mi- 
instance  ,  ..  •  •  ,1  5)  1 

litia,  raising  the  necessary  taxes  by  recom 
mendations"  of  county  committees;  and  Cumberland 
County  formally  instructed  its  delegates  to  the  Second 
Provincial  Convention  to  declare  to  that  body  that  any 
general  tax  imposed  by  it  for  such  purposes  would  be 
"cheerfully  submitted  to  by  the  inhabitants  of  this  county." 
The  First  Convention  (August,  1774)  had  authorized  its 
chairman  to  call  a  second  when  desirable.  The  Second  Con 
vention  met  March  20,  1775.  It  passed  only  "recommen 
dations"  in  form;  but  it  did  organize  the  revolutionary 
militia  into  a  state  system.  It  sat  only  eight  days ;  but  it 
recommended  the  counties  at  once  to  choose  delegates  to  a 
Third  Convention  to  represent  the  colony  for  one  year. 

Governor  Dunmore  forbade  the  elections  to  this  Third 
Convention  as  "acts  of  sedition" ;  but  they  passed  off  with 
regularity.  Meantime,  the  governor  called  an  Assembly, 
to  consider  a  proposal  from  Lord  North,  intended  to  draw 
Virginia  away  from  the  common  cause.  Instead  of  this, 
the  Assembly  gave  formal  sanction  to  all  the  acts  of  the 
Continental  congresses  and  of  the  Virginia  conventions. 
In  the  squabbles  that  followed,  Dunmore  took  refuge  on 
board  a  British  man-of-war.  The  Assembly  strenuously 
"deplored"  that  their  governor  should  so  "desert"  the 
The  end  of  "l°yal  and  suffering  colony,"  and  adjourned,  June 
royal  gov-  24.  This  ended  the  last  vestige  of  royal  govern- 

ernment          ment    jn  yirginia        Three  wee^s    ]ater^  tne  Third 

Convention  gathered  at  Richmond  (out  of  range  of  guns 
from  warships),  and  promptly  assumed  all  powers  and 
forms  of  government.  It  gave  all  bills  three  readings,  and 


FROM  COLONIES  TO  COMMONWEALTHS 

enacted  them  as  ordinances;  and  it  elected  an  executive  (a 
"committee  of  safety"),  and  appointed  a  colonial  Treasurer 
and  other  needful  officials.  In  the  winter  of  1776  it  dis 
solved,  that  a  new  body,  fresher  from  the  people,  might 
act  on  the  pressing  questions  of  independence  and  of  a 
permanent  government. 

The  Loyalists  early  began  to  accuse  the  Patriots  of  aiming 
at  independence.  But,  until  some  months  after  Lexington, 
the  Patriots  vehemently  disavowed  such  "vil- 
lainy,"  protesting  enthusiastic  loyalty  to  King  the  idea  of 
George.  They  were  ready  to  fight,  —  but  only  as  indePend- 
Englishmen  had  often  fought,  to  compel  a  change 
in  "ministerial  policy."  Otis,  Dickinson,  Hamilton,  in 
their  printed  pamphlets,  all  denounced  any  thought  of  in 
dependence  as  a  crime.  Continental  congresses  and  pro 
vincial  conventions  solemnly  repeated  such  disclaimers.  In 
March,  1775,  Franklin  declared  that  he  had  never  heard  a 
word  in  favor  of  independence  "from  any  person  drunk  or 
sober."  Two  months  later  still,  after  Lexington,  Washing 
ton  soothed  a  Loyalist  friend  with  the  assurance  that  if 
the  friend  ever  heard  of  his  [Washington's]  joining  in  any 
such  measure,  he  had  leave  to  set  him  down  for  everything 
wicked;  and  June  26,  after  becoming  commander  of  the 
American  armies,  Washington  assured  the  New  Yorkers 
that  he  would  exert  himself  to  establish  "peace  and  har 
mony  between  the  mother  country  and  the  colonies."  In 
September,  1775,  Jefferson  was  still  "looking  with  fondness 
towards  a  reconciliation,"  and  John  Jay  asserts  that  not 
until  after  that  month  did  he  ever  hear  a  desire  for  inde 
pendence  from  "an  American  of  any  description."  For 
months  after  Bunker  Hill,  American  chaplains,  in  public 
services  before  the  troops,  prayed  for  King  George ;  and,  for 
long,  Washington  continued  to  refer  to  the  British  army 
merely  as  the  "ministerial  troops."  Even  in  February, 
1776,  when  Gadsden  in  the  South  Carolina  convention  ex 
pressed  himself  in  favor  of  independence,  he  roused  merely  a 
storm  of  dismay,  and  found  no  support.  And  a  month  later 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

still,  Maryland  instructed  her  delegates  to  the  Continental 
Congress  not  to  consent  to  any  proposal  for  independence. 

All  this  was  honestly  meant ;  but  the  years  of  agitation  had 
sapped  the  ties  of  loyalty  more  than  men  really  knew,  and 
a  few  months  of  war  broke  them  wholly.  In  the  fall  of  1775 
the  King  refused  contemptuously  even  to  receive  a  petition  for 
reconciliation  from  Congress ;  and  soon  afterward,  he  sent  to 
America  an  army  of  "Hessians"  hired  out,  for  slaughter,  by 
petty  German  princelings.  Moreover,  it  became  plain  that, 
in  order  to  resist  England,  the  colonies  must  have  foreign 
aid ;  and  no  foreign  power  could  be  expected  to  give  us 
open  aid  while  we  professed  ourselves  English  colonies. 

Thus,  unconsciously,  American  patriots  were  ready  to 
change  front.  Then,  in  January,  1776,  came  Thomas 
Paine's  daring  and  trenchant  argument  for  inde- 
Paine's  pendence  in  Common  Sense.  This  fifty-page  pub- 
Common  lication,  in  clarion  tone,  spoke  out  what  the 
community  hailed  at  once  as  its  own  unspoken 
thought.  One  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  copies  sold  in 
three  months,  —  one  for  every  three  families  in  America. 
At  first  the  author's  name  was  not  given,  and  the  booklet 
was  commonly  attributed  to  one  of  the  Adamses  or  to 
Franklin.  Paine  was  a  poor  English  emigrant,  of  thirteen 
months  before,  whom  Franklin  had  befriended  for  the  "genius 
in  his  eyes."  A  few  lines  may  represent  his  terse  style. 

"The  period  of  debate  is  closed.  Arms  .  .  .  must  decide.  .  .  . 
By  referring  the  matter  from  argument  to  arms,  a  new  era  in 
politics  is  struck.  .  .  .  All  plans  .  .  .  prior  to  the  nineteenth 
of  April  are  like  the  almanacs  of  last  year.  .  .  . 

"  Where,  say  some,  is  the  king  of  America  ?  I'll  tell  you,  friend. 
He  reigns  above,  and  doth  not  make  havoc  of  mankind,  like  the 
royal  brute  of  Britain.  ...  A  government  of  our  own  is  our 
natural  right.  .  .  .  Freedom  has  been  hunted  round  the  globe. 
Asia  and  Africa  have  long  expelled  her.  Europe  regards  her  like 
a  stranger;  and  England  has  given  her  warning  to  depart.  O, 
receive  the  fugitive  and  prepare  in  time  an  asylum  for  mankind." 

Meantime,  the  growth  of  independent  State  governments 
was  going  on.  Several  colonies  had  applied  to  Congress 


INDEPENDENCE  AND  STATE  GOVERNMENTS       213 

for  counsel,  in  the  disorders  of  the  fall  of  1775.     In  reply, 
Congress  "recommended"  the  provincial  convention  of  New 
Hampshire  "to  call  a  full  and  free  representation  other  state 
of  the  people  .   .   .   [to]  establish  such  a  form  of  govem- 
government  as  in  their  judgment  will  best  produce  z 
the  happiness   of   the  people  and  most  effectually  secure 
peace  and  good  order  in  that  province,  during  the  continu 
ance  of  the  present  dispute  between  Great  Britain  and  the  colo 
nies."     Under  such  advice,   early  in  1776,  New  Hampshire 
and  South  Carolina  set  up  provisional  constitutions.     These 
documents,   however,  did  not  imply  independence.     They 
declared  themselves  temporary,  and  referred  always  to  the 
commonwealths  not  as  States,  but  as  "colonies." 

But  May  15,  1776,  Congress  took  more  advanced  action. 
It  recommended  the  "assemblies  and  conventions"  of  all 
colonies,  "where  no  government  sufficient  to  the  Congress 
exigencies  of  their  affairs  hath  been  hitherto  es-  reco*?~s 
tablished,  to  adopt  such  a  government  as  shall,  govern- 
in  the  opinion  of  the  representatives  of  the  people,  ments 
best  conduce  to  the  happiness  and  safety  of  their  constitu 
ents  in  particular,  and  of  America  in  general."     Two  days 
later,  in  a  letter  to  his  wife,  John  Adams  hailed  this  action 
(for  which  he  had  been  the  foremost  champion)  as  "a  total, 
absolute  independence  .   .  .  for  such  is  the  amount  of  the 
resolve  of  the  15th." 

Virginia   had  not  waited  for   this   counsel.     The   Fourth 
Virginia   convention    (page   211)    met   May    6,    1776,    and 
turned  at  once  to  the  questions  of  independence  Virginia 
and  of    a    constitution.     The  only  difference  of  leads  for 
opinion  was :  Should  Virginia,  standing  alone,  de-  encePand"a 
clare  herself  an  independent  State  and  frame  a  state  con- 
constitution  for  herself?      Or  should  she  try  to  stitutio 
get  the  Continental  Congress  to  make  a  declaration  and  to 
suggest  a   general   model   of   government  for   all   the   new 
States  ?     Plans  were   presented,  representing  each  of   these 
views.     On  May  15,  after  much  debate,  the  convention  de 
termined  upon  a  middle  plan.     Unanimously  it  instructed 
its  representatives  in  Congress  to  move  immediately  for  a  gen- 


214  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

eral  Declaration  of  Independence  there;  and  it  appointed  com 
mittees  at  once  to  draw  up  a  constitution  for  Virginia  herself 
as  an  independent  State.     This  was  clone  some  days  before 
the  recommendation  of  Congress  for  State  constitutions  was 
known  in  Virginia. 

The  bill  of  rights  (the  first  part  of  the  constitution)  was 
reported  by  the  committee  May  27,  and  adopted  by  the 
convention  June  12.  The  "frame  of  government"  was 
adopted  June  29.  To  it  at  the  last  moment  was  prefixed 
a  third  part  of  the  constitution,  a  declaration  of  independence 
for  Virginia,  earlier  than  the  Continental  Declaration. 

The  Virginia  Bill  of  Rights  was  the  first  document  of 
the  kind  in  our  history,  and  it  remains  one  of  our  greatest 
The  Virginia  s^ate  papers.  Three  or  four  States  at  once  copied 
BUI  of  it,  and  all  the  bills  of  rights  during  the  Revolu- 

Rlghts  tionary  period  show  its   influence.     Some  provi 

sions,  such  as  those  against  excessive  bail,  cruel  or  unusual 
punishments,  arbitrary  imprisonment,  and  the  like,  go  back 
to  ancient  English  charters,  even  for  their  wording.  Recent 
grievances  suggested  certain  other  clauses,  —  the  prohibition 
of  "general  warrants  "  (page  171),  the  insistence  upon  free 
dom  of  the  press,  and  the  emphasis  upon  the  idea  that  a 
jury  must  be  "of  the  vicinage"  (page  193). 

More  significant  still,  this  immortal  document  opens  with 
a  splendid  assertion  of  human  rights.  English  bills  of  rights 
had  insisted  upon  the  historic  rights  of  Englishmen,  but  had 
said  nothing  of  any  rights  of  man:  they  had  protested 
against  specific  grievances,  but  had  asserted  no  general 
principles.  Such  principles,  however,  had  found  frequent 
expression  in  English  literature,  and  thence  had  become 
household  phrases  with  American  political  thinkers.1  Now, 
these  fundamental  principles,  upon  which  American  govern 
ment  rests,  were  written  by  George  Mason  into  this  Virginia 
bill  of  rights,  —  a  fact  which  distinguishes  that  document 

1  Cf.  Otis'  words,  page  171  above.  About  1760  this  democratic  English  liter 
ature  began  to  affect  deeply  a  few  French  thinkers,  like  Rousseau.  These  men 
stated  the  old  English  principles  with  a  new  French  brilliancy ;  and  it  is  sometimes 
hard  to  say  whether  the  American  leaders  drew  their  doctrines  from  the  French 
or  the  older  English  sources. 


THE  DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE 

from  any  previous  governmental  document  in  the  world. 
Two  or  three  weeks  later,  Jefferson  incorporated  similar 
principles,  clothed  in  phrase  both  more  eloquent  and  more 
judicious,  in  the  opening  paragraphs  of  the  Continental 
Declaration  of  Independence. 

Among  the  principles  of  the  Virginia  document  are  the 
statements :  — 

"  That  all  men  are  by  nature  equally  free  l  and  independent,  and 
have  certain  inherent  rights.  .  .  . 

"  That  all  power  is  ...  derived  from  the  people. 

"  That  government  is,  or  ought  to  be,  instituted  for  the  common 
benefit  of  the  people  ...  and  that  when  any  government  shall 
be  found  inadequate  ...  a  majority  of  the  community  hath  an 
indubitable,  inalienable,  and  indefeasible  right  to  reform,  alter, 
or  abolish  it.  ... 

"  That  no  free  government,  or  the  blessings  of  liberty,  can  be 
preserved  .  .  .  but  ...  by  frequent  recurrence  to  fundamental 
principles. 

"  That  ...  all  men  are  equally  entitled  to  the  free  exercise 
of  religion,  according  to  the  dictates  of  conscience." 

June  7,  soon  after  the  Virginia  instructions  of  May  15 
reached  Philadelphia,  the  Virginia  delegation  in  the  Con 
tinental  Congress  moved  that  the  united  colonies  be  The  Ameri_ 
declared  "free  and  independent  States.'9  Brief  de-  canDeciara- 
bate  followed ;  but  action  was  postponed,  to  per-  J^epend- 
mit  uninstructed  delegates  to  consult  their  As-  ence,  July  4, 
semblies.  Meantime,  Congress  appointed  a  com-  177' 
mittee  to  prepare  a  fitting  "Declaration"  for  use  if  the 
motion  should  prevail.  Happily  it  fell  to  Thomas  Jefferson 
to  pen  the  document ;  and  his  splendid  faith  in  democracy 
gave  the  Declaration  a  convincing  eloquence  which  has 
made  it  ever  since  a  mighty  power  in  directing  the  destiny 
of  the  world. 

1  According  to  Edmund  Randolph,  the  phrase  equally  free  was  objected  to  as 
inconsistent  with  slavery.  Such  objectors  were  quieted  with  the  amazing  assur 
ance  that  "  slaves,  not  being  constituent  members  of  our  society,  could  never  pretend 
to  any  benefit  from  such  a  maxim."  In  Massachusetts,  similar  words  in  her  bill  of 
rights  of  1780  were  held  later  by  her  courts  to  have  abolished  slavery  within  her 
limits,  though  that  result  was  not  thought  of  when  the  clause  was  adopted. 


216  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

By  July  1,  all  delegations  except  New  York's  had  either 
received  positive  instructions  to  vote  for  independence  or 
had  at  least  been  released  from  former  restrictions  against 
doing  so;  and  the  matter  was  again  taken  up.  The  first 
vote  was  divided ;  but  on  the  next  day  (July  2)  the  motion 
for  independence  was  carried  by  the  vote  of  twelve  States. 


*»«a*ijiii... •.      v*^«' —  u>^»^c  grj  •  W 

6   yy^^g^^  ts*.c.JLx*-  _ 


ORIGINAL  DRAFT  OF  THE  DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE  in  Jefferson's  hand 
writing,  written,  he  tells  us,  "without  reference  to  book  or  pamphlet." — A 
photograph  from  a  facsimile  in  the  Boston  Public  Library. 

The  formal  Declaration,  reported  by  the  committee,  was 
then  considered  in  detail,  and  adopted  on  July  4.  On  the 
9th,  a  new  (Fourth)  Provincial  Congress  for  New  York 
gave  the  assent  of  that  State. 

The  delegates  from  New  York  had  written  home  for 
instructions  (June  10),  but  the  Third  New  York  Convention 
New  York's  rePned  that  it  could  not  presume  to  give  author- 
"acces-  ity.  A  "Fourth  Convention"  was  called  at  once, 
to  act  upon  the  matter.  This  was  virtually  a 
referendum.  The  new  convention  did  not  meet  until  July 
9,  and  so  the  delegates  from  New  York  at  Philadelphia  took 
no  part  in  the  votes. 

John  Adams  regarded  the  vote  of  July  2  as  the  decisive 


"TIMES  THAT  TRY  MEN'S  SOULS"  217 

step.  On  the  3d  of  July  he  wrote  to  his  wife :  "The  second 
day  of  July,  1776,  will  be  the  most  memorable  epocha  in  the 
history  of  America.  I  am  apt  to  believe  that  it  will  be 
celebrated  by  succeeding  generations  as  the  great  anniversary 
festival.  It  ought  to  be  commemorated  as  the  day  of 
deliverance,  by  solemn  acts  of  devotion  to  God  Almighty. 
It  ought  to  be  solemnized  with  pomp  and  parade,  with  shows, 
games,  sports,  guns,  bells,  bonfires,  and  illuminations,  from 
one  end  of  this  continent  to  the  other,  from  this  time 
fore  ward  forever  more." 

Military  events  in  '76  were  indecisive.     In  the  spring, 
after  nearly  a  year's  siege,  Washington  forced  the  English 
out  of  Boston,  but  he  was  unable  to  prevent  their  Military 
occupying  New  York.     Defeated  badly  at  Long  events  in '76 
Island  and  White  Plains,  his  sadly  lessened  troops  with 
drew  through  New  Jersey  into  Pennsylvania;    but  a  few 
weeks  later  he  cheered  the  Patriots  by  the  dashing  winter 
victories  of  Trenton  and  Princeton.     In  the  darkest  of  the 
dark  days  before  those  victories,  Thomas  Paine  Thomas 
thrilled  America  with  The  Crisis.     This  pamphlet  Fame's 
was  a  mighty  factor  in  filling  the  levies  and  dis-   The  Cnsis 
pelling  despondency.     Pages  of  it  were  on  men's  tongues, 
and   the   opening   sentence   has  passed  into   a  byword,  - 
"These  are  the  times  that  try  men's  souls." 

II.    THE  NEW  STATE   CONSTITUTIONS 

Meantime  the  revolution  in  governments  went  on.  Said 
John  Adams  toward  the  close  of  '76,  —  "The  manufacture 
of  governments  is  as  much  talked  of  as  was  the  manufacture 
of  saltpeter  before."  In  the  six  months  between  the  Dec 
laration  of  Independence  and  the  Battle  of  Trenton,  seven 
States  followed  Virginia  in  adopting  written  constitutions. 
Georgia  was  hindered  for  a  time  by  the  predomi- 

£  i         rr«      •  j  XT         xr     i  i         Constitu- 

nance  oi  her  lories;    and  New  lork,  because  she  tkmsinthe 

was  held  by  the  enemy.     These  States  followed  in 

'77.     The  remaining  three  States  had  already  set 

up  provisional  governments.     In  Massachusetts  and  New 


218  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Hampshire,  these  remained  in  force  for  some  years.  South 
Carolina  adopted  a  regular  constitution  in  '78. 

Thanks  to  the  political  instinct  of  the  people,  the  in 
stitution  of  these  new  governments,  even  in  the  midst  of 
war  and  invasion,  was  accomplished  quietly.  As  to  Vir 
ginia,  Jefferson  wrote  (August  13,  '77),  -  "The  people  seem 
to  have  laid  aside  the  monarchic,  and  taken  up  republican 
government,  with  as  much  ease  as  would  have  attended  the 
throwing  off  an  old  and  putting  on  a  new  suit  of  clothes." 

No  one  of  the  first  eleven  constitutions  was  voted  on  by  the 
people.  In  most  cases  the  "conventions"  that  adopted 
them  had  no  express  authority  to  do  so ;  and 
ratification  some  of  those  conventions  had  been  elected  months 
Before  tnere  was  anv  ta^  °f  independence.  For 
the  most  part,  the  constitutions  were  enacted 
precisely  as  ordinary  laws  were.  In  Virginia  Jefferson 
urged  a  referendum  on  the  constitution,  arguing  that 
otherwise  it  could  be  repealed  by  any  legislature,  like  any 
other  statute.  But  this  doctrine  was  too  advanced  for 
his  State.  A  "union  of  mechanics"  in  New  York,  too, 
protested  vigorously  but  vainly  against  the  adoption  of  a 
constitution  by  a  provincial  convention  without  "the  in 
habitants  at  large"  being  permitted  to  "exercise  the  right 
God  has  given  them  ...  to  approve  or  reject"  it. 

In  New  England,  on  the  other  hand,  thanks  to  the  training 
of  the  town  meeting,  the  sovereignty  of  the  people  was 
understood  by  every  artisan  and  farmer,  as  elsewhere 
only  by  lonely  thinkers.  (The  New  York  "mechanics," 
just  quoted,  were  mainly  of  New  England  birth  or  descent.) 
The  legislatures  of  Rhode  Island  and  Connecticut  did  adopt 
the  old  charters  as  constitutions  (without  change),  without 
reference  to  the  people,  because  it  was  held  that  the  people 
had  already  sanctioned  them  by  long  acquiescence.  But 
in  New  Hampshire  and  Massachusetts,  where  new  con 
stitutions  were  to  be  adopted,  there  was  no  serious  thought  of 
acting  without  a  popular  referendum.  Indeed,  that  was 
not  enough.  The  people  of  these  States  demanded  also  a 
popular  initiative  in  the  matter. 


NEW  STATE  CONSTITUTIONS 

Throughout   the   summer  of   '76,   Massachusetts   papers 
and   pamphlets   teemed   with   projects   for   a   new  govern 
ment.      Some  of  these  were  fantastic  enough  to  The  Massa- 
give     delight    to    critics     of     democracy.       One  chusetts 
"farmer"   published   a  constitution   of  sixty   ar-  ^2tu" 
tides,  which,  he  boasted  modestly,  he  had  prepared  struggle, 
for  the  commonwealth  "between  the  hours  of  10  17?l 
A.M.  and  2  P.M."     Opposition  to  any  executive  was  common. 
At  a  slightly  later  date,  one  town  voted  "that  it  is  Our 
Opinniun  that  we  do  not  want  any  Goviner  but  the  Guviner 
of  the  univarse  and  under  him  a  States  Gineral  to  Consult 
with  the  wrest  of  the  united  stats  for  the  good  of  the  whole." 

September  17  the  Assembly  asked  the  towns  to  authorize 
it  to  prepare  a  constitution,  "to  be  made  public  for  the 
inspection  and  perusal  of  the  inhabitants,  before  the  ratifi 
cation  thereof  by  the  Assembly."  This  would  have  let 
the  people  only  make  suggestions.  Massachusetts  would 
not  tolerate  such  a  plan,  and  a  general  opposition  appeared 
to  any  action  whatever  by  the  ordinary  legislature.  Various 
towns  voted  to  resist  the  movement  until  —  in  the  words  of 
a  Boston  resolution  —  the  people  should  elect  "a  convention 
for  this  purpose  and  this  alone"  Still  the  next  year  (May 
5,  1777),  the  expiring  Assembly  recommended  that  its 
successor  should  be  empowered,  at  the  elections,  to  make  a 
constitution.  Many  towns  again  refused  assent.  None  the 
less,  the  new  Assembly  did  venture  to  submit  a  constitution  to 
the  vote  of  the  towns  (February,  1778) ;  but  less  than  a  tenth 
of  the  towns  approved  the  document ! 

At  last  the  Assembly  was  converted.  It  now  asked  the 
towns  to  vote  at  the  next  election  whether  they  would  em 
power  their  delegates  in  the  coming  Assembly  to  call  a 
Convention  for  the  sole  purpose  of  forming  a  constitution. 
The  responses  were  favorable,  and  a  Convention  was  called 
for  September  1,  to  be  chosen  as  regular  Assemblies  were. 
That  body  drew  up  a  constitution  which  (March  2)  was 
submitted  to  the  towns.  More  than  two  thirds  the  towns 
voted  to  ratify ;  and  in  June,  1780,  the  constitution  went 
into  effect. 


220  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

In  New  Hampshire  a  like  method  was  followed ;  and,  after 
three  plans  had  been  rejected,  a  constitution  was  ratified 
in  1783.  It  was  many  years  before  this  method  became 
general  outside  New  England. 

The  thirteen  constitutions  were  strikingly  alike.  This  was 
due  mainly  to  the  similarity  between  the  preceding  colonial 
similarity  governments,  but  in  part  to  a  remarkably  active 
of  the  interchange  of  ideas  among  the  leaders  during  the 

constitu-  spring  and  summer  of  '76.  Before  the  Fourth 
tions  Virginia  Convention  Patrick  Henry  corresponded 

freely  with  the  two  Adamses.  Members  of  Congress  at 
Philadelphia  constantly  discussed  forms  of  government  at 
informal  gatherings ;  and,  on  several  occasions,  delegates 
from  distant  colonies  returned  home  to  take  part  in  consti 
tution-making. 

All  the  constitutions  were  "republican"  without  a  trace 
of  hereditary  privilege.  Nearly  all  safeguarded  the  rights 
of  the  individual  by  a  distinct  bill  of  rights.  Most  of  them 
formally  adopted  the  English  Common  Law  as  part  of  the  law 
of  the  land.  Except  in  Pennsylvania  and  Georgia  (the 
two  youngest  States)  the  legislature  had  two  Houses.  Penn 
sylvania  kept  a  plural  executive,  —  a  council  with  one  mem 
ber  designated  as  "president";  but  elsewhere  the  revolu- 
The  execu-  tionary  committees  of  safety  gave  way  to  a  single 
tive  weak-  "  governor"  or  "  president"  The  governors,  however, 
had  less  power  than  the  old  colonial  governors.  The 
people  did  not  yet  clearly  see  the  difference  between  trusting 
an  officer  chosen  by  themselves  and  one  appointed  by  a  dis 
tant  king.  New  York  and  Massachusetts,  however  (the 
eleventh  and  twelfth  States  to  adopt  constitutions),  had  had 
time  to  learn  the  need  of  a  firm  executive,  and  strengthened 
that  branch  of  government  somewhat,  though  they  left  it 
weaker  than  is  customary  to-day.  These  two  States  also 
placed  the  election  of  the  governor  in  the  hands  of  the  people  di 
rectly.  That  was  already  the  case  in  Connecticut  and  Rhode 
Island  under  the  colonial  charters.  Everywhere  else  the 
executive  was  appointed  by  the  legislature. 


NEW  STATE  CONSTITUTIONS 

Everywhere    the    legislature    overshadowed    the    two    other 
branches  of  government.     The  judiciary,  like  the  executive, 
was  usually  chosen  by  the  legislature,  and  in  many  supremacy 
cases  was  removable  by  executive  and  legislature  of  the 
without  formal  trial.     No  one  yet  foresaw,  in  any-  leglslature 
thing  like  its  modern  extent,  the  later  power  of  the  judiciary 
to  declare  legislative  acts  void.      The  old  executive  check  upon 
the  legislature,  the  absolute  veto,  nowhere  appeared. 
Only  two  States  devised  the  new  qualified  veto,  to 
be  overridden  by  two  thirds  of  each  House,  which  has  since 
become  so  common.     New  York  gave  this  veto  to  governor 
and  judiciary  acting  together,  in  a  "revisionary  council"; 
Massachusetts  gave  it  to  the  governor  alone. 

Religious    discrimination    was    common.     "Freedom     of 
worship"  was  generally  asserted  in  the  bills  of  rights;   but 
this   did    not    imply    our    modern    separation   of  Reiigious 
church  and  state.     Office-holding  in  several  States  discrimina- 
was  restricted  to  Protestant  Christians,  and  some  * 
States  kept   a   specially    favored    ("established")    church. 
The  Massachusetts  bill  of  rights  provided  that  all  citizens 
should  be   taxed  for   church  support,  but  that  each  man 
should  have  the  right  to  say  to  which  church  in  his  town  or 
village  his  payment  should  go.     Most  places  in  Massachu 
setts,  however,  had  only  a  Congregational  church,  which, 
therefore,  was  maintained  at  public  expense.     Connecticut 
had  a  similar  plan. 

To-day  it  is  customary  to  say  that  the  most  important 
clause  in  any  constitution-    "the  constitutional  clause" 
is   the   one   that   determines   how  the   document  Lacfc 
may  be  changed.     But  half  these  first  constitutions  provision 
had  no    amendment    clause    whatever.     The    omis-  for  amend- 
sion  was  due  partly  to  the  political  inexperience 
of   that   day ;    partly   to   the   vague   expectation   that,   on 
occasion,  by  a  sort  of  peaceful  revolution,  the  people  would 
"recur  to  fundamental  principles"  in  much  the  same  way 
as  in  creating  the  original   instruments.      Even  when  an 
attempt  was  made  to  define  a  method  of  amendment,  the 
result  was  in  most  cases  unsatisfactory.     In  South  Carolina 


222  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

the  legislature  gave  ninety  days'  notice  (that  public  opinion 
might  be  known),  and  then  acted  as  in  passing  any  law.  In 
Maryland,  an  amendment  became  part  of  the  constitution 
if  passed  by  two  successive  legislatures.  In  Delaware  five 
sevenths  of  one  house  and  seven  ninths  of  the  other  were 
required  to  carry  an  amendment,  —  which  amounted  to 
complete  prohibition  upon  constitutional  change.  In 
Pennsylvania,  amendments  could  be  proposed  only  at 
intervals  of  seven  years,  and  only  in  a  peculiar  and  com 
plicated  fashion  —  which  eventually  proved  unworkable. 
Only  Georgia  and  Massachusetts  provided  for  calling  con 
stitutional  conventions  in  modern  fashion. 

Each  of  the  thirteen  States  excluded  a  large  part  of  even  the 
free  White  males  from  voting.  Some  gave  the  franchise  only 
The  limited  to  those  who  held  land,  and  most  of  the  others  de- 
franchise  manded  the  ownership  of  considerable  taxable  prop 
erty  of  some  kind  as  a  qualification.  Even  such  democratic 
States  as  Pennsylvania,  New  Hampshire,  Georgia,  North 
Carolina  permitted  only  taxpayers  to  vote.1  The  country 
over,  probably  not  one  White  man  in  four  held  even  the 
lowest  degree  of  the  suffrage.  Democracy  was  more  praised 
than  practiced. 

Another  effective  aristocratic  device  was  to  set  up  graded 
qualifications  for  political  rights.  Commonly,  a  man  had 
to  have  more  property  to  vote  for  the  upper  than 
quaiifica-  for  the  lower  House  of  the  legislature.  This  made 
tions  for  the  senates  special  protectors  of  property  interests, 
rights,  and  Commonly,  too,  there  was  a  still  higher  qualifica- 
indirect  tion  for  sitting  in  the  legislature,  —  often  more 

elections          .  .  &TT  ,        '  ,  '  . 

for  the  upper  House  than  lor  the  lower,  —  and 
yet  more  for  a  governor.  In  several  States,  the  upper 
House  was  chosen  by  the  lower.  In  Massachusetts,  all  men 
who  could  vote  for  one  House  could  vote  for  the  other  also, 

1  These  four  States  recognized  clearly  that  democracy  demands  education. 
They  all  put  into  their  constitutions  a  provision  for  encouraging  public  education. 
It  should  be  added  that  Pennsylvania  and  Georgia  were  a  trifle  more  liberal  with 
the  franchise  than  the  compact  statement  in  the  text  would  indicate.  The  first 
gave  the  suffrage  to  the  grown-up  sons  of  freeholders,  and  the  second  to  certain 
classes  of  skilled  artisans,  whether  taxpayers  or  not. 


NEW  STATE  CONSTITUTIONS 

but  in  choosing  the  senate,  the  votes  were  so  apportioned 
that  a  rich  man  counted  for  several  poor  men :  the  richer 
any  part  of  the  State,  the  more  senatorial  districts  it  had. 
North  Carolina  pretty  well  lost  her  democracy  in  these 
gradations :  to  vote  for  a  representative,  a  man  had  only  to 
be  a  taxpayer;  but  to  vote  for  senator,  he  must  own  50 
acres  of  land  ;  to  sit  as  representative,  he  must  have  100  acres ; 
as  senator,  300  acres  ;  and  as  governor,  £1000  of  real  estate. 

Here  were  four  ingenious  checks  upon  a  dangerously 
encroaching  democracy :  (1)  an  upper  House  so  chosen  as 
to  be  a  stronghold  for  the  aristocracy ;  (2)  indirect  election 
of  the  executive  and  judiciary ;  (3)  property  qualifications, 
sometimes  graded,  for  voting ;  and  (4)  higher  qualifications 
for  holding  office.  All  these  had  been  developed  in  the  colonial 
period.  On  the  whole  the  new  States  weakened  the  checks  (and 
no  State  increased  them)  ;  but  every  State  retained  some  of 
them. 

This  suggests  also  a  curious  fact  regarding  our  State 
senates.  In  the  seventeenth  century,  aristocracy  was  so 
strong  that  the  aristocratic  "Council"  (whether  elected 
as  in  Massachusetts,  or  appointed  as  in  Virginia)  dominated 
a  one-House  Assembly.  The  change  to  two  Houses  was  set  in 
motion  everywhere  by  the  democratic  element,  as  a  step  toward 
greater  freedom  of  action  (pages  44,  87).  When  we  reach  the 
Revolution,  democracy  has  gained  power;  and  it  was  the 
aristocracy  which  preserved  the  two-House  system,  in  order 
that  property  and  station  might  intrench  themselves  safely  in 
the  upper  House  when  compelled  to  surrender  the  other  one. 

Vermont,  it  is  true,  was  a  real  democracy ;    but  she  was 
not  one  of    the    thirteen   colonies,  nor  did  she  become  a 
State    of    the    Union   until    1791.     Her   territory  The  Ver 
had  belonged  to  New  York  and  New  Hampshire ;  mont  de 
but  neither  government  was  satisfactory  to  the  mocracy: 
inhabitants  —  who  were  really   Connecticut  and  tion  that 
New   Hampshire   frontiersmen    (page   166)  ;    and  P™Jf,s  the 
during    the    early    Revolutionary    disorders,    the 
Green  Mountain  districts  set  up  a  government  of  their  own 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

(adopting,  as  their  hasty  statement  put  it,  "the  laws  of 
God  and  Connecticut,  until  we  have  time  to  frame  better'9). 
This  "Vermont"  was  not  "recognized"  by  Congress  or  by 
any  State  government ;  but,  in  1777,  it  adopted  a  consti 
tution  with  manhood  suffrage. 

III.   CONGRESS  AND  THE  WAR 

England's  task  was  a  difficult  one,  even  if  she  had  had 
only  America  to  deal  with.  Great  Britain  had  then  eight 
Military  million  people,  —  or  about  three  times  as  many  as 
problems  the  colonies  had.  But  she  had  to  wage  war  across 
three  thousand  miles  of  ocean  in  an  age  when  it  took  eight  or 
ten  weeks  to  cross  and  when  no  ship  carried  more  than  four  or 
five  hundred  people.  The  Americans,  too,  inhabited  a  large 
and  scattered  territory,  with  no  vital  centers.  To  conquer 
it,  an  invading  army  must  hold  much  of  it  at  one  time. 
At  one  time  or  another,  English  troops  held  Boston,  New 
York,  Newport,  Philadelphia,  Savannah  —  but  never  more 
than  one  or  two  at  once. 

The  first  great  danger  to  the  colonies  lay,  not  in  Eng 
land's  strength,  but  in  American  disunion.  The  Revolu- 
Lack  of  tion  was  more  of  a  civil  war  than  was  even  the 
union  in  great  "Civil  War"  of  1861.  In  1776  every  com 
munity  was  divided,  and  neighbor  warred  on 
neighbor.  In  New  York,  Pennsylvania,  and  Georgia  the 
Loyalists  were  a  majority,  and  in  the  colonies  as  a  whole 
they  made  at  least  every  third  man.  They  came  mainly 
from  the  commercial,  capitalistic,  and  professional  classes, 
always  timid  regarding  change,  and  from  the  easy-go 
ing,  well-contented  part  of  society.  On  the  whole,  they 
represented  respectability  and  refinement.  Society  was 
moving  rapidly  :  not  all  could  keep  the  same  pace.  In 
July,  1776,  the  line  was  drawn.  Men  who  that  month  stood 
where  Washington  or  Jefferson  had  stood  seven  or  eight 
months  before  (page  211)  were  Tories. 

The  other  great  danger  to  America  was  the  inefficiency  of 
Congress.  Even  with  every  third  man  siding  with  England, 


CONGRESS  AND  THE  WAR 

if  we  had  had  a  central  government  able  to  gather  and  wield 
our  resources,  the  British  armies  could  have  been  driven  into 
the  sea  in  six  months.     From  their  500,000  able-  inefficiency 
bodied  White  males,  the  Americans  should  have  of  Congress 
put  in  the  field  an  army  of  100,000  men.     But  if  we  leave  out 
the  militia,  which  now  and  again  swarmed  out  for  a  few  days 
to  repel  a  local  raid,  the  Continental  forces  hardly  reached 
a  third  that  number  at  any  time.     For  the  greater  part  of 
the  war,  indeed,  the  American  armies  numbered  only  about 
10,000  men,  and  at  times  they  sank  to  5000. 

Even  these  few  were  ill-paid,  ill-fed,  and  worse  clothed. 
And  this,  not  so  much  from  the  poverty  of  the  country,  as  from 
lack  of  organization.  As  John  Fiske  well  says,  in  referring 
to  the  dreadful  sufferings  of  Washington's  army  at  Valley 
Forge,  which  "have  called  forth  the  pity  and  admiration  of 
historians"  :  — 

"The  point  of  the  story  is  lost  unless  we  realize  that  this  misery 
resulted  from  gross  mismanagement  rather  than  from  the  poverty 
of  the  country.  As  the  soldiers  marched  on  the  seventeenth  of 
December  to  their  winter  quarters,  their  route  could  be  traced 
on  the  snow  by  the  blood  that  oozed  from  bare,  frost-bitten  feet. 
Yet,  at  the  same  moment,  .  .  .  hogsheads  of  shoes,  stockings, 
and  clothing  were  lying  at  different  places  on  the  route  and  in 
the  woods,  perishing  for  want  of  teams." 

Fortunately  the  English  commanders  were  of  second  or 
third  rate  ability.  Lord  North  is  reported  to  have  said  of 
them,  —  "I  don't  know  whether  they  frighten  the  enemy, 
but  I  am  sure  they  frighten  me."  Among  the  Americans, 
the  war  developed  some  excellent  generals  of  the  second  rank, 
-  Greene,  Arnold,  Marion,  —  but  many  officers  were  in 
competent  or  self-seeking  or  treacherous.  After  the  first 
months,  the  faithful  endurance  of  the  common  soldier  was 
splendid.  Said  one  observer,  "Barefoot,  he  labors  through 
Mud  and  Cold  with  a  Song  in  his  Mouth,  extolling  War  and 
Washington."  Yet  at  times  even  this  soldiery  was  driven 
to  conspiracy  or  open  mutiny  by  the  jealous  unwillingness 
of  Congress  to  make  provision  for  their  needs  in  the  field  or 
for  their  families  at  home. 


226  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Out  of  all  this  murkiness  towers  one  bright  and  glorious 
figure.  Pleading  with  Congress  for  justice  to  his  soldiers, 
George  shaming  or  sternly  compelling  those  justly  dissatis- 
Washington  ge(j  soldiers  to  their  duty,  quietly  ignoring  repeated 
slights  of  Congress  to  himself,  facing  outnumbering  forces  of 
perfectly  equipped  veterans  when  his  own  army  was  a  mere 
shell,  Washington,  holding  well  in  hand  that  fiery  temper 
which  still,  on  occasion,  could  make  him  swear  "like  an 
angel  from  heaven,"  was  always  great-minded,  dignified, 
indefatigable,  steadfastly  indomitable ;  a  devoted  patriot ; 
a  sagacious  statesman ;  a  consummate  soldier,  patient  to 
wait  his  chance  and  daring  to  seize  it :  the  one  indispensable 
man  of  the  Revolution. 

The  best  excuse  for  the  misrule  of  Congress  was  its 
real  weakness  and  its  consequent  feeling  of  irresponsibil 
ity.  In  all  internal  matters,  it  was  limited  to 
ernment  of  recommendations ;  and  the  States  grew  to  regard 
supphca-  jj-s  requests  more  and  more  lightly.  It  asked  men 
to  enlist,  offering  bounties  to  those  who  did 
so ;  but  often  it  found  its  offers  outbid  by  the  State  govern 
ments  to  increase  their  own  troops.  It  had  no  power  to 
draft  men  into  the  ranks :  only  the  State  governments 
could  do  that.  So,  too,  in  the  matter  of  finances.  Congress 
could  not  tax :  it  only  called  on  the  States  for  contributions, 
in  a  ratio  agreed  upon.  Such  contributions,  even  when 
reinforced  by  the  loans  from  France,  were  not  more  than 
half  of  the  amount  necessary  to  carry  on  the  war. 

At  the  very  beginning,  Congress  was  forced  to  issue  paper 
money.  Each  scrap  of  such  money  was  merely  an  indefinite 
Continental  promissory  note  from  Congress  to  "bearer."  In 
currency  five  vearSj  printing  presses  supplied  Congress  with 
$241,000,000  of  such  "Continental  currency'9  ;J  and,  with  this, 
perhaps  $50,000,000  worth  of  services  and  supplies  were 
bought.  (After  depreciation  began,  even  with  a  new  issue 
Congress  could  not  get  nearly  a  dollar's  worth  of  supplies  for 

1  So  called  to  distinguish  this  currency  put  forth  by  the  central  government 
from  similar  issues  by  the  States.  The  State  currency  amounted  to  $200,000,000 
more ;  but  most  of  it  had  more  value  than  the  Continental  paper. 


CONGRESS  AND  THE  WAR 


227 


a  paper  dollar.)  Congress  itself  had  no  power  to  compel  people 
to  take  this  currency  ;  but,  at  the  request  of  Congress,  the 
States  made  it  legal  tender.  The  people,  however,  had 
little  confidence  in  the  promise  to  repay.  In  1776  (when  only 
twenty  millions  had  been  issued),  depreciation  set  in.  In 
1778,  a  dollar  would  buy  only  twelve  cents'  worth  of  goods. 
In  1781  Thomas  Paine  paid  $300  for  a  pair  of  woolen  stock 
ings,  and  Jefferson  records  a  fee  of  $3000  to  a  physician  for 
two  visits.  "Not  worth  a  continental"  became  a  byword. 
Before  the  close  of  1781,  this  currency  ceased  to  circulate 
except  as  speculators  bought  it  up,  at  perhaps  a  thousand 
dollars  for  one  in  coin. 
A  mob  used  it  to  "tar 
and  feather"  a  dog; 
and  we  are  told  of  an 
enterprising  barber  who 
papered  his  shop  with 
Continental  notes. 

All  this  meant  a  reign 
of  terror  in  business. 
Men  who,  in  1775,  had 
loaned  a  neighbor  $1000 
in  good  money  were 

Compelled    three  Or  four 

.    •,        . 

years  later,  to  take  in 
payment  a  pile  of  paper  almost  without  value,  but  named 
$1000.  Prices  varied  fantastically  from  one  day  to  an 
other,  and  in  neighboring  localities  on  the  same  day. 
Wages  and  salaries  rose  more  slowly  than  prices  (as  is 
always  the  case),  and  large  classes  of  the  people  suffered 
exceedingly  in  consequence. 

But  it  must  be  remembered  that  this  "cheap  money"  was 
the  only  money  Congress  could  get.  If  a  "note"  had  ever 
been  repaid,  it  would  have  been  in  reality  a  "forced  loan." 
Since  it  never  was  repaid,  it  amounted  to  a  tax,  or  a  confisca 
tion  of  private  property  for  public  uses,  —  the  tax  being 
paid,  not  by  one  man,  but  by  all  the  people  through  whose 
hands  it  passed.  A  sold  a  horse  to  the  government  for  one 


CONTINENTAL  BILL,  from  the  original  in  the 
Massachusetts  Historical  Society  Collections. 


228  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

hundred  dollars  in  paper  currency ;  when  he  passed  the 
paper  on  to  B,  he  received  perhaps  only  ninety  dollars  in 
value  for  it.  Ten  dollars  had  been  taken  from  him  by  tax, 
or  confiscation.  B  perhaps  got  only  seventy  dollars'  worth 
for  the  money;  so  he  had  been  "taxed"  twenty  dollars. 
The  government  had  secured  the  horse  for  a  piece  of  paper, 
and  eventually  the  horse  was  paid  for  by  the  various  people 
in  whose  hands  the  paper  depreciated.  Such  taxation  was 
horribly  wasteful  and  demoralizing;  but  it  was  the  only 
kind  of  tax  to  which  the  people  would  have  submitted  in  the 
amount  required.  Without  the  paper  money,  the  Revolu 
tion  could  not  have  been  won. 

The  critical  years  of  the  war  were  '77  and  '78.  In  1777 
Howe  invaded  Pennsylvania.  Washington  maneuvered  his 
The  War  inferior  forces  admirably.  He  retreated  when  he 
in  '77-78  na(|  ^o  .  was  robbed  of  a  splendidly  deserved,  de 
cisive  victory  at  Germantown  only  by  a  mixture  of  chance 
and  a  lack  of  veteran  discipline  in  his  soldiers ;  and,  after 
spinning  out  the  campaign  for  months,  went  into  winter 
quarters  at  Valley  Forge  —  then  to  grow  famous  for  heroic 
suffering.  Howe  had  won  the  empty  glory  of  capturing  "  the 
Rebel  Capital,"  -  where  he  now  settled  down  to  a  winter 
of  feasting  and  dancing ;  but  Washington  had  decoyed  him 
from  his  chance  to  make  safe  Burgoyne's  invasion  from 
Canada,  and  so  crush  the  American  cause.  Lacking  the  ex- 
Burgoyne's  pected  cooperation  from  the  south,  Burgoyne 
capture  proved  unable  to  secure  the  line  of  the  Hudson, 
and  was  forced  to  surrender  to  the  incompetent  Gates. 

This  capture  of  an  entire  English  army  turned  the  waver 
ing  policy  of  France  into  firm  alliance  with  America  against 
her  ancient  rival.  From  the  first,  the  French  government 
had  furnished  the  Americans  with  money  and  supplies, 
secretly  and  indirectly ;  and  many  adventurous  young 
noblemen  like  Lafayette,  imbued  with  the  new  liberal 
philosophy  of  Rousseau,  had  volunteered  for  service  under 
Washington.  Franklin  had  been  acting  as  the  American 
agent  in  Paris  for  some  months  without  formal  recognition. 


CONGRESS  AND  THE  WAR 

Now  he  quickly  secured  a  treaty  of  alliance  that  recognized 
the  independence  of  the  United  States.  The  possessions  of 
the  two  allies  in  America  were  mutually  guaran-  The  French 
teed ;  and  it  was  agreed  that  peace  with  England  alliance 
should  be  made  only  after  consultation  and  approval  by 
both  allies.1 

France  drew  Spain  in  her  train ;  and,  soon  after,  England 
quarreled  with  Holland.  Without  an  ally,  England  found 
herself  facing  not  merely  her  own  colonies,  but  the  three 
greatest  naval  powers  of  the  world  (next  to  herself),  while 
most  of  the  rest  of  Europe,  under  the  lead  of  Russia,  held 
toward  her  an  attitude  of  "armed  neutrality"  -which 
meant  instant  readiness  for  hostility. 

In  America,  however,  the  darkest  months  of  the  war  were 
those  between  the  victory  over  Burgoyne  and  the  news  of 
the  French  alliance.  The  first  flush  of  enthusiasm  The  dark 
was  spent.  The  infamous  Conway  Cabal  (among  dftys  in  '78 
officers  and  Congressmen)  threatened  to  deprive  the  country 
of  Washington's  services.  Nearly  a  fifth  of  the  starving  army 
deserted  to  the  well-fed  enemy  in  Philadelphia,  and  another 
fifth  could  not  leave  their  winter  huts  for  want  of  clothing. 
Washington  himself,  as  his  private  letters  show,  was  so 
depressed  by  "the  spirit  of  disaffection "  in  the  country  that 
he  felt  "the  game  is  pretty  near  up."  The  paper  money, 
issued  by  Congress  in  constantly  increasing  volume  —  the 
chief  means  of  paying  the  soldiers  and  securing  supplies  — 
was  nearly  valueless.  Foreign  trade  was  impossible  be 
cause  England  commanded  the  sea ;  and  domestic  industry 
of  all  sorts  was  at  a  standstill  because  of  the  demoralization 
of  the  currency.  To  large  numbers  of  patriots,  even  the 
news  of  the  new  ally  was  of  doubtful  cheer.  Many  began 
to  fear  that  they  had  only  exchanged  the  petty  annoyances 

1  Large  sections  of  the  French  people  felt  a  genuine  enthusiasm  for  America, 
but  to  the  despotic  French  government  the  alliance  was  purely  a  "League  of 
Hatred."  Especially  did  the  French  government  fear  that  if  England  and  her 
colonies  again  united,  they  would  do  away  with  all  occasion  for  the  troublesome 
"Sugar  Act"  by  seizing  the  French  West  Indies.  Spain  and  Holland  were  never 
our  allies :  they  were  the  allies  of  France.  The  treaty  with  France  is  the  only 
alliance  America  has  ever  formed. 


230  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

of  English  rule  for  the  slavery  of  French  despotism  and  of 
the  Spanish  Inquisition. 

Two  results  of  the  French  treaty  followed  close  upon  its 
announcement.  (1)  The  English  general  was  ordered  to 
evacuate  Philadelphia  and  concentrate  forces  at  New  York. 
The  watchful  Washington  was  close  upon  the  rear  of  the 
retreating  army,  but  at  Monmouth  his  strategy  and  dash 
were  again  robbed  of  the  fruit  of  victory,  —  this  time  by 
the  misconduct  or  treason  of  General  Charles  Lee.  (2) 
Lord  North  sent  commissioners  to  America  with 
"  olive  an  "  olive  branch  "  proposition  :  all  the  contentions 

branch  "  of  the  Americans,  previous  to  July  4,  1776,  would 
be  granted,  together  with  a  universal  amnesty,  if 
they  would  return  to  their  allegiance.  By  a  unanimous 
vote,  Congress  refused  to  consider  propositions  "so  de 
rogatory  to  the  honor  of  an  independent  nation." 

In  the  northern  states  no  British  army  of  consequence 
again  appeared  in  the  field  ;  and  Washington's  forces  there 
The  war  in  were  small.  Except  for  minor  operations,  the  war 
'79-'so  was  transferred  to  the  South,  with  swift  alterna 
tions  of  success  and  failure  through  1779  and  1780.  In  both 
North  and  South,  after  the  summer  of  '78,  the  struggle  took 
on  a  new  character.  It  became  a  "war  of  desolation,"  —a 
succession  of  sudden  raids,  to  harry  and  distress  a  country 
side  or  to  burn  a  town  or  port,  varied  by  occasional  bloody 
and  vindictive  combats  like  those  at  Cowpens  and  King's 
Mountain.  A  terrible  feature  of  some  of  these 
use6  of  B  raids  was  the  use  of  Indian  allies  by  the  English. 


Indian  j$ut  ft  must  be  remembered  that  the  Americans  had 

first  tried  to  secure  such  allies.  Both  Washington 
and  John  Adams  had  favored  their  enlistment.  Mont 
gomery  had  some  Indians  in  the  army  with  which  he  invaded 
Canada,  and  there  were  a  few  in  the  American  army  besieging 
Boston  in  1775.  It  had  been  intended  to  use  the  friendship 
of  the  natives  for  the  French  in  order  to  draw  them  into  a 
force  under  Lafayette.  The  simple  fact  is  that  Indians 
had  been  used  by  both  sides  in  America  in  all  the  inter- 


CONGRESS  AND  THE  WAR  231 

colonial  wars,  and  both  parties  in  this  new  contest  continued 
their  use  so  far  as  possible ;  but  the  natives  saw  truly  that 
the  real  enemy  of  their  race  was  the  American  settler,  and 
therefore  turned  against  him. 

The  Loyalists  who  had  been  driven  from  their  homes  in 
Boston  and  Philadelphia  with  the  retirement  of  the  British 
forces,  together  with  those  living  near  the  British  The 
stronghold  of  New  York,  enrolled  themselves  in  L°yalists 
large  numbers  under  the  English  flag.  New  York  State  alone 
furnished  15,000  recruits  to  the  English  army,  besides  8000 
more  Loyalist  militia.  At  some  important  periods,  more 
Americans  were  under  arms  against  independence  than  for  it. 
Because  of  their  knowledge  of  the  country,  these  Tory  troops 
were  used  freely  in  harrying  expeditions.  In  consequence, 
the  attitude  of  the  Whig  governments,  State  and  local, 
toward  even  the  passive  sympathizers  with  England,  became 
ferocious.  Those  unhappy  men  who  had  long  since  been 
deprived  of  their  votes  were  now  excluded  from  professions 
and  many  other  employments,  forbidden  to  move  from  place 
to  place,  ruined  by  manifold  fines,  drafted  into  the  army, 
imprisoned  on  suspicion,  sometimes  deported  with  their 
families  in  herds  to  distant  provinces,  and  constantly  ex 
posed  to  the  most  horrible  forms  of  mob  violence.  If  they 
succeeded  in  escaping  to  the  British  lines,  their  property 
was  confiscated  (oftentimes  to  enrich  grafting  speculators 
at  corruptly  managed  sales),  and  they  themselves,  by  hun 
dreds  at  a  time,  were  condemned  to  death  in  case  of  return 
or  recapture,  —  not  by  judicial  trials,  but,  without  a  hear 
ing,  by  bills  of  attainder.1  In  1778  Massachusetts,  by 
one  Act,  banished  310  "peaceful"  Tories.  More  than  sixty 
of  these  were  Harvard  graduates,  and  the  list,  says  the 

1  A  "bill  of  attainder"  is  a  legislative  act  imposing  penalties  upon  one  or  more 
individuals.  The  legislature  condemns,  not  the  courts ;  and  of  course  the  accused 
lose  all  the  ordinary  securities  against  injustice.  Such  bills  had  been  used  occasion 
ally  in  English  history.  By  our  constitution  of  1787,  bills  of  attainder  are  wholly 
forbidden.  Until  the  adoption  of  that  instrument,  however,  many  States  did  pass 
such  bills  against  prominent  Tories,  —  sometimes  against  great  numbers  of  them 
at  once.  An  attempt  was  made  in  the  Virginia  bill  of  rights  to  prohibit  such 
bills ;  but  Patrick  Henry  urged  that  they  might  be  indispensable  in  that  time  of 
war.  Some  States  did  incorporate  the  prohibition  in  their  first  bill  of  rights. 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

sturdy  American,  Moses  Coit  Tyler,  reads  "like  the  bead- 
roll  of  the  oldest  and  noblest  families  concerned  in  the  found 
ing  and  upbuilding  of  New  England  civilization." 

Seemingly,  the  war  had  settled  down  to  a  test  of  endur 
ance.  Campaigns  in  Europe  and  the  West  Indies  drained 
England's  resources,  glorious  though  the  results  were  to 
her  arms  against  those  tremendous  odds.  Meantime,  in 
America,  Congress  kept  its  sinking  finances  afloat  by 
generous  gifts  and  huge  loans  from  France.  The  army, 
however,  was  dangerously  discontented.  Desertions  to  the 
enemy  rose  to  a  hundred  or  two  hundred  a  month. 

Suddenly  an  unexpected  chance  offered.  Washington, 
ever  ready,  grasped  at  it,  and  this  time  no  evil  fate  inter- 
The  capture  vened.  With  the  indispensable  cooperation  of  the 
of  Com-  French  army  and  fleet,  Cornwallis  and  his  army 
were  cooped  up  in  Yorktown.  With  his  surrender 
(October  19,  1781)  war  virtually  closed,  though  peace  was 
not  signed  for  many  months. 

While  peace  negotiations  dragged  along  in  Europe,  came 
one  more  famous  episode  in  America.  This  was  Washington's 
Washington  "  Newburg  Address."  The  pay  of  the  army  was 
atNewburg  vears  behind,  and  Congress  showed  no  wish  to 
settle  the  matter.  Taking  advantage  of  the  soldiers'  bitter 
discontent,  a  group  of  officers  in  the  camp  at  Newburg 
formed  a  plan  to  get  better  government  by  making  Washing 
ton  king.  This  proposition  Washington  at  once  repulsed, 
with  grieved  anger ;  but  still  an  anonymous  committee  called 
a  meeting  of  officers  to  find  some  way  of  forcing  Congress  to 
act  while  the  army  still  had  arms  in  their  hands.  A  conflict 
that  would  have  sullied  the  beginning  of  the  new  nation's 
career  was  averted  only  by  the  tact  and  unrivaled  influence 
of  Washington.  He  anticipated  the  meeting  of  the  officers 
by  calling  an  earlier  one  himself,  at  which  he  prevailed  upon 
their  patriotism  to  abandon  all  forms  of  armed  compulsion ; 
and  then  he  finally  induced  Congress  to  pay  five  years' 
salary  in  government  certificates,  worth  perhaps  twenty 
cents  on  the  dollar,  —  a  meager  return,  but  perhaps  all 
that  the  demoralized  government  was  equal  to. 


THE  TREATY  OF  PARIS  IN  1783  233 

IV.   THE  PEACE  TREATY  OF   1783 

The  negotiations  for  peace  were  carried  on  from  Paris, 
with  Franklin,  John  Jay,  and  John  Adams  to  represent  the 
United  States.  In  spite  of  King  George,  the  fall  Peace  ne- 
of  Yorktown  overthrew  Lord  North's  ministry;  gotiations 
and  the  new  English  government  contained  statesmen 
friendly  to  America,  such  as  Fox,  Rockingham,  and  Shel- 
burne  (page  183).  This  fact  and  the  remarkable  ability  of  the 
American  negotiators  resulted  in  a  treaty  marvelously  ad 
vantageous.  England  could  not  well  avoid  conceding  Ameri 
can  independence,  but  Shelburne  meant  to  do  it  in  generous 
fashion.  He  intended  not  merely  peace,  he  said,  but  "recon 
ciliation  with  America,  on  the  noblest  terms  and  by  the 
noblest  means." 

The  critical  question  concerned  territory.  Just  before 
the  war  (1769),  a  few  Virginians  had  crossed  the  western 
mountains  to  settle  in  fertile  lands  between  the  Ohio  The  signif_ 
and  Cumberland  rivers,  in  what  we  now  call  Ken-  icance  of  the 
tucky  and  Tennessee ;  and,  during  the  war  itself, 
many  thousands  had  established  homes  in  that  region.  From 
the  Kentucky  settlements,  George  Rogers  Clark,  a  Virginia 
officer,  in  incredibly  daring  campaigns  (1778-1779),  had  cap 
tured  from  England  the  old  French  posts  Kaskaskia  and 
Cahokia,  on  the  Mississippi,  and  Vincennes  on  the  Wabash. 
While  preparing  for  this  expedition  in  1777,  Clark  had  re 
ceived  a  letter  of  encouragement  from  Thomas  Jefferson,  who, 
even  so  early,  felt  keenly  the  importance  of  the  West.  "  Much 
solicitude,"  he  wrote,  "will  be  felt  for  the  outcome  of  your 
expedition.  ...  If  successful,  it  will  have  an  important 
bearing  in  establishing  our  northeastern  boundary."  This 
prophecy  was  now  fulfilled.  The  conquered  district  con 
tained  only  French  settlers,  but  it  had  been  organized,  like 
Kentucky,  as  a  Virginia  county.  The  Americans,  therefore, 
had  ground  for  claiming  territory  to  the  Mississippi,  and 
such  extension  of  territory  was  essential  to  our  future 
development.  England,  however,  at  first  expected  us  to 
surrender  this  thinly  settled  western  region  in  return  for  the 


234  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

evacuation  of  New  York,  Charleston,  and  other  cities  still 
held  by  her  armies.  Moreover,  France  and  Spain  secretly 
France  intended  that  the  treaty  should  shut  up  our  new 
means  to  nation  between  the  Atlantic  and  the  Appalachians, 
West  to  leaving  the  southwest  to  Spain  and  the  Indians, 
England  an(j  handing  back  to  England  the  northwest,  which 
legally  had  been  part  of  Canada  (note  on  page  201).  By  the 
treaty  of  1778,  we  were  bound  to  make  no  peace  without  the 
consent  of  France,  and  our  commissioners  had  been  strictly 
instructed  by  Congress  to  act  only  with  the  advice  of  Vergennes, 
the  French  minister.  But  Jay  and  Adams  suspected  Ver- 
gennes  of  bad  faith,  and  finally  persuaded  Franklin  to  disre 
gard  the  instructions.  France  had  no  desire  to  injure 
America,  but  she  had  no  objection  to  leaving  it  helpless  and 
dependent  upon  her  favor ;  and  she  did  wish  to  satisfy  her  ally 
Spain,  whom  she  had  dragged  into  the  war.  The  story  goes 
that, 'while  Franklin  and  Jay  were  discussing  the  situation, 
Franklin  asked  in  surprise,  "What!  would  you  break  your 
instructions?"  "As  I  break  this  pipe,"  said  Jay,  throwing 
his  pipe  into  the  fireplace.  Franklin  had  rendered  incalcu 
lable  diplomatic  service  to  his  country,  but  his  long  and  in 
timate  relations  with  the  French  government  had 
negotiators  unfitted  him  for  an  independent  course  in  this  crisis. 
^  a^  events>  w^h  patriotic  daring,  the  American 
commissioners  did  enter  into  secret  negotiations 
with  England,  and  secured  terms  which  Vergennes  could  not 
well  refuse  to  approve  when  the  draft  of  the  treaty  was 
placed  before  him. 

By  this  Treaty  of  1783,  England  acknowledged  the  independ 
ence  of  the  United  States,  with  territory  reaching  to  the  Missis- 
sippi,  and  from  the  Great  Lakes  to  Florida.     She 
gave  up  without  consideration,  not  only  the  sea- 
coast  cities  she  held,  but  also  the  Northwest  posts,  which  had 
never  been  seen  by  an  American  army.     She  also  granted  to 
the  Americans  the  right  to  share  in  the  Newfoundland  fish 
eries,  from  which  other  foreign  nations  were  shut  out.     In  re 
turn,  the  American  Congress  recommended  to  the  various 
States  a  reasonable  treatment  of  the  Loyalists,  and  promised 


THE  MEANING  TO  THE  WORLD        235 

solemnly  (a  matter  which  should  have  gone  without  saying) 
that  no  State  should  interpose  to  prevent  Englishmen  from 
recovering  in  American  courts  the  debts  due  from  Americans 
before  the  war.  No  wonder  that  the  chagrined  Vergennes 
wrote:  "The  English  buy  the  peace,  rather  than  make 
it.  ...  Their  concessions  regarding  boundaries,  fisheries, 
and  the  Loyalists  exceed  anything  I  had  thought  possible." 
The  American  negotiators  told  the  English  commissioners 
frankly  that  the  "recommendation"  regarding  the  Loyalists 


THE  SWORDS  of  Colonel  William  Prescott  and  Captain  John  Linzee,  who  fought 
on  opposite  sides  at  Bunker  Hill.  A  grandson  of  Prescott  and  a  granddaughter 
of  Linzee  married,  and  the  offspring  of  this  marriage  mounted  the  swords  in 
this  way  "in  token  of  international  friendship  and  family  alliance."  They  are 
now  in  the  rooms  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 

would  carry  no  weight.  England  herself  afterwards  appro 
priated  large  sums  of  money  to  compensate  partially  that 
unfortunate  class  of  exiles. 

The  territorial  advantages,  however,  were  not  fully  en 
joyed  by  the  United  States  for  some  twelve  years.  When  the 
English  forces  evacuated  the  American  seaports,  they  carried 
away  a  few  hundred  Negroes,  who,  they  claimed,  had  become 
free  by  aiding  them  during  the  war,  and  whom  they  would 
not  now  surrender  to  their  old  masters.  The  American 
State  governments  made  this  a  pretext  for  deliberately 
breaking  one  of  the  most  reasonable  articles  of  the  treaty, 
-  that  regarding  British  debts.  Despite  the  pledged  faith 
of  the  central  government,  State  after  State  passed  laws 
to  prevent  the  collection  of  such  debts  in  their  courts. 
Meantime,  the  Americans  had  not  at  first  been  ready  to  take 
over  the  posts  on  the  Great  Lakes ;  and  when  they  desired 
to  do  so,  England  refused  to  surrender  them,  because  of 
these  infractions  of  the  treaty. 


236  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

The  "Revolution"  covers  twenty  years,  twelve  of  wran 
gling  and  eight  of  war  (1763-1775,  1775-1783).  It  created 
The  mean-  ^ne  &rs^  American  state.  It  helped  to  make  the 
ing  of  the  colonial  policy  of  all  European  countries  more  en- 
Revolution  lightened  It  « laid  the  foundation  for  the  French 

Revolution,"  as  Arthur  Young  said  in  1789,  and  so  helped 
modify  profoundly  the  internal  character  of  Europe.  It 
helped  tremendously  to  start  England  herself  —  a  little  later 

—  on  her  splendid  march  toward  democracy.  Whatever  their 
blunders,  the  Americans  had  "warred  victoriously  for  the 
right  in  a  struggle  whose  outcome  vitally  affected  the  whole 
human  race."  With  a  generosity  possible  only  to  a  great 
English  people,  the  English  have  long  recognized  this  truth, 
generous  and,  with  amazing  frankness  and  emphasis,  have 
taught  it  to  their  children  even  in  the  elementary 
schools  for  forty  years  past.  This  is  why  the  last  two  gen 
erations  of  Englishmen  have  been  so  much  more  friendly 
toward  America  than  most  Americans  are  toward  England 

-  until  during  the  World  War  they  came  to  adopt  July 
Fourth  quite  as  an  English  red-letter  day,  celebrating  it  in 
regular  American  fashion. 

Perhaps  it  is  a  trifle  easier  for  Englishmen  to  do  this  be 
cause  after  all  England  came  out  of  the  Revolutionary  War 
En  land  w^  military  glory  little  tarnished.  She  had  been 
and  the  fighting  all  Europe  as  well  as  America,  and  only 
Europe  m  America  had  the  struggle  gone  against  her. 
Says  Theodore  Roosevelt:  "England,  hemmed  in 
by  the  ring  of  her  foes,  fronted  them  with  a  grand  courage. 
In  her  veins  the  Berserker  blood  was  up,  and  she  hailed  each 
new  enemy  with  grim  delight.  Single  handed,  she  kept  them 
all  at  bay.  ...  So  with  bloody  honor,  she  ended  the  most 
disastrous  war  she  had  ever  waged." 


ACTUAL  OCCUPATION 

AND 
TREATY  BOUNDARIES  1783 

•  —  -•»  Nominal  Boundary  of  treaty  of  *783 


.':•  Settlements  west  of  the  Mountains 

SCALE  OF   MILES 


PAET  IV  — THE  MAKING  OF  THE  SECOND  WEST 

The  West  is  the  most  American  part  of  America.  .  .  .  What  Europe 
is  to  Asia,  what  England  is  to  the  rest  of  Europe,  what  America  is  to  Eng 
land,  —  that  the  western  States  and  Territories  are  to  the  eastern  States.  — 
JAMES  BRYCE. 

CHAPTER  XII 

THE   SOUTHWEST:   SELF-DEVELOPED 

THE  land  between  the  Appalachians  and  the  Missis 
sippi  had  passed  from  France  to  England  in  1763  (page  137). 
Some  six  thousand  French  settlers  remained  in  the  The  West 
district,  in  three  nearly  equal  groups :  (1)  about  from  1763 
Detroit;  (2)  near  Vincennes;  (3)  at  the  "Missis-  * 
sippi  towns,"  Kaskaskia  and  Cahokia.  For  several  years 
more  these  were  the  only  White  settlers.  The  whole  district 
had  been  included  in  old  grants  to  the  seaboard  colonies. 
But  as  soon  as  England  got  control,  a  Royal  Proclamation  for 
bade  English  speaking  colonists  to  settle  west  of  the  mountains, 
and  instructed  colonial  governors  to  make  no  land-grants  there ; 
and  in  1774  parliament  annexed  the  territory,  as  far  south  as 
the  Ohio,  to  the  old  French  province  of  Quebec  (page  201, 
note) .  The  government  dreaded  Indian  wars  —  sure  to 
follow  the  advance  of  the  frontiersman  —  and  it  was  in 
fluenced  by  commercial  companies  that  wished  to  keep  the 
vast  Mississippi  valley  as  a  fur  trade  preserve. 

But  even  had  England  remained  in  control,  the  attempt  to 
shut  out  English-speaking  settlers  was  doomed  to  certain 
failure.  How  the  Scotch-Irish  and  Germans  had  made  a 
first  "West"  in  the  long  valleys  of  the  Appalachians  soon 
after  1700  has  been  told.  A  half  century  or  so  later  their 
Americanized  sons  and  grandsons  were  ready  to  make  a 
greater  and  truer  West  in  the  eastern  half  of  the  valley  of  the 

237 


238  MAKING  THE  SECOND   "WEST" 

Mississippi.  Those  restless  border  farmers  had  begun  to 
feel  crowded  in  their  narrow  homes.  For  some  years,  stray 
hunters,  who  had  ventured  as  far  west  as  the  great  river, 
stirred  the  Appalachian  frontier  with  romantic  stories  of 
the  wonders  and  riches  of  the  vast  central  basin,  and  just 
before  the  Revolution  a  few  hardy  families  pushed  the  line 
of  American  settlement  across  the  mountains. 

This  movement  into  the  second  "West  "  (the  Southwest) 
grew  all  through  the  Revolution .  It  is  natural  for  us  to  think 
Settlement  of  the  years  1775-1783  as  given  wholly  to  patriotic 
Southwest  War  ^°r  P°^ca^  independence.  But  during  just 
during  the  those  years  thousands  of  earnest  Americans  turned 
Revolution  away  from  that  contest  to  win  industrial  independ 
ence  for  themselves  and  their  children  beyond  the  mountains. 
While  the  old  Atlantic  sections  were  fighting  England,  a 
new  section  sprang  into  being,  fighting  Indians  and  the 
wilderness. 

Until  the  peace  of  1783,  settlement  penetrated  only  into 
the  "dark  and  bloody  ground"  between  the  Ohio  and  its 
The "  dark  southern  branches.  This  district  had  long  been 
and  bloody  a  famous  hunting  ground,  where  Indians  of  the 
north  and  of  the  south  slew  the  bison  and  one 
another.  Freqtfent  war  parties  flitted  along  its  trails,  but  no 
tribe  claimed  it  for  actual  occupation.  So  here  lay  the  line 
of  least  resistance  to  the  on-pushing  wave  of  settlement. 

In  1769  a  few  Virginia  frontiersmen  moved  their  fami 
lies  into  the  valley  of  the  Watauga,  one  of  the  headwaters 
of  the  Tennessee.  They  thought  themselves  still 
Watauga  in  Virginia,  and  in  the  spring  of  1771  they  were 
i°ined  by  fugitive  Regulators  from  North  Carolina. 
The  same  summer,  however,  a  surveyor  ran  out 
the  southern  boundary  of  Virginia  and  found  that  Watauga 
lay  in  territory  claimed  by  North  Carolina.  That  colony 
was  in  no  condition  to  care  for  so  inaccessible  a  section,  nor 
would  the  Watauga  settlers  submit  to  her , rule.  Instead  they 
set  up  for  themselves.  Communication  with  Virginia  was 
possible,  because  the  long  valleys  trending  to  the  northeast 
ran  near  together  as  they  entered  that  State.  But  a  hundred 


WATAUGA,   1769-1772 


239 


miles  of  forest-clad  mountains,  without  a  trail  fit  even  for  a 
pack  horse,  divided  Watauga  from  the  nearest  settlements  in 
North  Carolina.  Watauga  itself  lay  with  mountains  to  the 
west,  as  well  as  to  the  east ;  but  its  water  communication 


WESTERN  SETTLEMENT,   1769-1784. 


with  the  Mississippi  justifies  us  in  regarding  it  as  part  of  the 
land  "west  of  the  mountains." 

Two  leaders  stand  forth  in  this  westward  movement  into 
Tennessee,  —  James  Robertson  and  John  Sevier.     Robertson 
was  a  mighty  hunter  who  had  spied  out  the  land 
to  find  a  better  home  for  his  family.    A  backwoods-  Robertson 
man  born,  a  natural  leader  with  splendid  qualities  a*dj°hn 
of  heart  and  head,  he  had  learned  "letters  and  to 
spell"  after  marriage,  from  his  wife.     Sevier  was  a  "gentle 
man  "  of  old  Huguenot  family  and  of  some  culture.     He  was 
the  most  dashing  figure  of  the  early  frontier,  —  a  daring 
Indian  fighter  and  an  idolized  statesman  among  his  rough 
companions,  well  portrayed  in  Churchill's  The  Crossing. 

The  essential  thing  about  Watauga,  however,  was  not 
its  leaders,  but  the  individuality  and  democracy  of  the  whole 
population.  Immigrants  came  in  little  groups  of  families, 
those  from  Carolina  by  a  long  detour  through  Virginia.  No 


240  MAKING  THE  SECOND  "WEST" 

wagon  roads  pointed  west;  and  it  was  a  generation  more 
before  the  white,  canvas-covered  wagon  (afterward  familiar 
as  the  "prairie  schooner")  became  the  token  of  the  im 
migrant.  At  best,  the  early  Southwest  had  only  dim  and 
rugged  trails  through  the  forests  ("traces"  blazed  by  the 
hatchet  on  tree  trunks).  Along  such  trails,  men,  rifle  al 
ways  in  hand,  led  pack  horses  loaded  with  young  children 
and  a  few  necessary  supplies;  while  the  women  and  older 
children  drove  the  few  lean  cattle. 

By  1772  the  settlers  were  grouped  about  thirteen 
"stations."  A  "station"  was  a  stockaded  fort  such  as 
The  stock-  *s  snown  °n  Page  166.  One  side  was  formed  by 
aded  a  row  of  log  huts,  facing  in.  The  remaining 

sides,  with  a  log  "blockhouse"  at  each  corner, 
were  a  close  fence  of  hewn  "pickets,"  considerably  higher 
than  a  man's  head,  driven  firmly  into  the  ground  and  bound 
together.  Within  were  supply  sheds  for  a  short  siege,  and 
sometimes  a  central  and  larger  blockhouse,  —  a  sort  of  inner 
"keep."  Stockade  and  blockhouses  were  loopholed  at  con 
venient  intervals  for  rifles,  and,  except  for  surprise  or  fire, 
such  a  fort  was  impregnable  against  any  attack  without 
cannon. 

The  fort,  however,  was  only  for  times  of  extraordinary 
danger.  Ordinarily,  the  families  lived  apart,  each  in  its  log 
And  the  cabin  upon  its  own  farm.  The  holdings  were 
homes  usually  of  from  four  hundred  to  a  thousand  acres ; 

but  for  many  years  they  remained  forest-covered,  except  for 
a  small  stump-dotted  "clearing,"  about  each  cabin.  The 
clearings  nearest  one  another  were  often  separated  by  miles 
of  dense  primitive  forest.  At  an  alarm  of  Indians,  all  families 
of  a  "station"  abandoned  these  scattered  homes  and  sought 
refuge  within  the  stockade.  In  more  peaceful  times, 
"neighbors,"  from  many  miles  around,  gathered  to  a 
"house-raising"  for  a  newcomer  or  for  some  one  whose  old 
home  had  been  destroyed  by  fire.  The  two  qualities  that 
especially  characterized  this  new  West,  says  Theodore 
Roosevelt,  were  "capacity  for  self-help  and  capacity  for 
combination" 


BOONE  IN  KENTUCKY,   1769-1774  241 

In  the  spring  of  1772  the  men  of  the  thirteen  forts 
gathered  at  Robertson's  station  in  mass  meeting,  to  organize 
a  government.  This  meeting  adopted  Articles  of 
Association,  —  "a  written  constitution,  the  first  ever  watauga 
adopted  west  of  the  mountains,  or  by  a  community 
of  American-born  freemen."  (The  Fundamental 
Orders  of  Connecticut  had  been  formed,  of  course,  by  Eng 
lish-nurtured  men . )  Manhood  suffrage  and  absolute  religious 
freedom  were  main  features  of  this  social  compact,  —  amazing 
facts  when  we  remember  how  far  short  of  such  democracy  fell 
the  Revolutionary  constitutions  of  the  Eastern  States  four  or 
five  years  later.  A  representative  convention  of  thirteen,  one 
from  each  station,  chose  a  "court"  of  five  members  who 
formed  the  government.  This  body  of  commissioners  held 
regular  meetings  and  managed  affairs  with  little  regard 
for  legal  technicalities,  but  with  sound  sense.  For  six 
years  Watauga  was  an  independent  political  community. 
Then,  in  1778,  when  the  Revolution  had  reformed  North 
Carolina,  Watauga  recognized  the  authority  of  that  State 
and  became  Washington  County. 

The  second  group  of  Western  settlements  —  almost  as  early 
as  Watauga  —  was  made  in  Kentucky.  Among  the  many  dar 
ing  hunters  and  Indian  fighters,  who,  preceding  Daniel 
settlement,  had  ventured  from  time  to  time  into  the  Boone  in 
bloody  Indian  hunting  grounds  south  of  the  Ohio,  Kentucky 
Daniel  Boone  was  the  most  famous.  As  early  as  1760,  Boone 
hunted  west  of  the  mountains  ;  and  in  1769  (the  year  Watauga 
was  founded)  he  went  on  a  "long  hunt"  there  with  six  com 
panions.  After  five  weeks'  progress  through  the  forest 
stretching  continuously  from  the  Atlantic,  this  little  party 
broke  through  its  western  fringe  and  stood  upon  the  verge 
of  the  vast  prairies  of  America.  They  had  come  to  the  now 
famous  "blue-grass"  district  of  Kentucky.  Hitherto  (ex 
cept  for  petty  Indian  clearings)  American  colonists  had  had 
to  win  homes  slowly  with  the  ax  from  the  stubborn  forest. 
Now  before  the  eyes  of  these  explorers  there  spread  away 
a  lovely  land,  where  stately  groves  and  running  waters 
intermingled  with  rich  open  prairies  and  grassy  meadows, 


MAKING  THE  SECOND  "WEST" 


inviting  the  husbandman  to  easy  possession  and  teeming 
with  game  for  the  hunter,  —  herds  of  bison,  elk,  and  deer, 
as  well  as  bear  and  wolves  and  wild  turkey,  in  abun 
dance  unguessed  before  by  English-speaking  men.  The 
prairies  proper,  even  when  reached,  did  not  at  first  attract 

settlers.  The  lack  of  fuel 
and  often  of  water  more 
than  made  up  for  the  diffi 
culty  of  clearing  forest  land. 
But  Kentucky  offered  a 
happy  mixture. 

In  the  following  months, 
hard  on  the  trail  of  the 
hunters,  followed  various 
small  expeditions  of  back 
woods  surveyors  and 
would-be  settlers,  in  spite 
of  frequent  death  by  the 
scalping  knife  and  at  the 
stake.  Very  soon  the  colo 
nist  learned  that  the  Woods 
Indian  of  the  West — armed 
now  almost  as  well  as  the 
Whites  —  was  a  far  more 
formidable  foe  than  the 
weak  tribes  of  the  coast  had 
been.  But  the  colonist  of 
1770,  too,  was  a  far  more 
A  "BOONE  TREE,"  on  Boone's  Creek,  effective  forest  fighter  than 

Tennessee.     The  inscription  reads:    D.      J.K       T^o-l^U    vj-t+W  nf    1  fion 
Boon  cilled  A  Bar  on  this  tree  year  1760.  -kngllSJl  Settler  Ot      D^U, 

and  was  not  affrighted.     In 

particular,  Boone  returned  again  and  again,  and,  in  1773, 
he  sold  his  Carolina  home,  to  settle  in  the  new  land  of 
"Lord Dun-  promise.  His  expedition  was  repulsed,  however, 
mote's  by  a  savage  Indian  attack,  and  the  next  year  the 
opening  of  a  great  Indian  War  along  the  Virgin 
ian  and  Pennsylvania  border  drove  every  settler  out  of 
Kentucky. 


LORD  DUNMORE'S  WAR,  1774 


243 


This  was  " Lord  Dunmores  War."  Without  provocation, 
a  dastard  White  trader  had  murdered  the  helpless  family  of 
Logan,  a  friendly  Iroquois  chieftain.  In  horrible  retaliation 
a  mighty  Indian  confederacy  was  soon  busied  with  torch  and 
tomahawk  on  the  western  frontiers.  Pennsylvania  suffered 
most,  and  the  dilatory  government  there  did  little  to 
protect  its  citizens.  Vir 
ginia,  however,  acted 
promptly.  To  crush  the 
confederacy  she  sent  an 
army  far  beyond  her  line 
of  settlement,  into  the 
distant  Northwest,  - 
where  she  claimed  juris 
diction,  though  parlia 
ment  had  just  annexed 
the  territory  to  Quebec 
(page  201).  This  Vir 
ginian  force  was  com 
posed  chiefly  of  hardy 
frontier  riflemen,  with 
deerskin  hunting  shirts 
for  uniform,  but,  by  a 
curious  contrast,  it  was 

i    j    i                 -17       1*  v            i  DANIEL  BOONE  at  85  (in  1819),  when  he  had 

ICQ    Dy   an   ^nglisn   earl,  moved  on  to  frontier  Missouri.     Fromapor- 

the  royal  governor,  Lord  trait  by  Chester  Harding,  now  in  the  Filson 

-r-v  Club,  Louisville,  Kentucky. 

Dunmore. 

The  rear  division  of  the  army,  when  about  to  cross  the 
Ohio  at  the  mouth  of  the  Kanawha,  was  surprised,  through 
the   splendid    generalship   of    the   Indian    leader  Battle  of 
Cornstalk,  by  the  whole  force  of  the  natives ;  but,  the  Great 
after  a  stubborn  pitched  battle,  the  frontiersmen  * 
won  a  decisive  victory.     This  Battle  of  the  Great  Kanawha 
is  as  important  as  any  conflict  ever  waged  between  Whites 
and  Redmen.     Says  Theodore    Roosevelt:     "It  so  cowed 
the  northern  Indians  that  for  two  or  three  years  they  made 
no  organized  attempt  to  check  the   White   advance.  .  .  . 
[It]  gave  opportunity  for  Boone  to  settle  in  Kentucky  and, 


244  MAKING  THE  SECOND  "WEST" 

therefore,  for  Robertson  to  settle  Middle  Tennessee,  and  for 
Clark  to  conquer  Illinois  and  the  Northwest.  It  was  the 
first  link  in  the  chain  of  causes  that  gave  us  for  our  western 
boundary  in  1783  the  Mississippi  and  not  the  Alleghenies" 

Permanent  settlement  in  central  Kentucky  began  the 
next  spring  (1775).  For  a  few  months  it  had  the  form  of  a 
Henderson  proprietary  colony.  A  certain  Henderson,  a  citi- 
and  zen  of  North  Carolina,  bought  from  the  southern 

acky  Indians  their  rights  to  a  great  tract  in  central 
Kentucky  and  Tennessee.  He  named  the  proposed  colony 
Transylvania,  and  secured  Boone  as  his  agent.  In  March 
and  April,  Boone  and  a  strong  company  marked  out  the 
Wilderness  Road l  and  began  to  build  "  Boone's  Fort "  (p.  166) . 
Henderson  soon  arrived  with  a  considerable  colony.  But 
the  Revolution  ruined  all  prospect  of  English  sanction  for 
his  proprietary  claims,  and  Virginia  firmly  asserted  her  title 
to  the  territory.  Henderson  soon  passed  from  the  scene; 
and,  in  1777,  Kentucky,  with  its  present  bounds,  was  or 
ganized  as  a  county  of  Virginia. 

Kentucky  already  contained  several  hundred  fighting 
men,  and  now  it  became  the  base  from  which  George  Rogers 
Clark  conquered  the  Northwest  (page  233).  Before  the 
close  of  the  Revolution,  Kentucky's  population  exceeded 
25,000 ;  and  when  peace  made  Indian  hostility  less  likely, 
a  still  larger  immigration  began  to  crowd  the  Wilderness 
Road  and  the  Ohio. 

Meanwhile  Watauga  had  become  a  mother  of  a  still  more 
western  colony.  Population  had  increased  rapidly,  and 
The  Cum  some  °f  tne  earlier  "forts"  had  grown  into  strag- 
beriand  gling  villages.  At  the  end  of  ten  years,  this 
settlements,  region  was  no  longer  a  place  for  frontiersmen  ;  and, 
in  1779,  Robertson,  with  some  of  his  more  restr 
less  neighbors,  migrated  once  more  to  a  new  wilderness 

1  This  famous  Wilderness  Road  was  for  many  years  merely  a  narrow  bridle 
path,  through  the  more  passable  parts  of  the  forest  and  across  the  easiest  fords, 
leading  two  hundred  miles  from  the  Holston  River  (near  Watauga)  into  central 
Kentucky.  In  the  worse  places  the  thick  underbrush  was  cut  out;  but  much 
of  the  time  only  the  direction  was  blazed  on  trees. 


THE  CUMBERLAND  SETTLEMENTS  245 

home  in  west-central  Tennessee,  on  the  bend  of  the  Cum 
berland. 

These  "Cumberland  settlements''9  were  the  third  group  of 
English-speaking  colonists  in  the  Southwest.  Population 
thronged  into  the  fertile  district,  with  the  usual  proportion 
of  undesirable  frontier  characters ;  and  the  settlers  found 
it  needful  at  once  to  provide  a  government.  May  1,  1780, 
a  convention  of  representatives  at  Nashboro  adopted  a 
constitution,  —  which,  however,  was  styled  by  the  makers 
merely  "a  temporary  method  of  restraining  the  licentious." 
A  few  days  later,  this  "social  compact"  was  signed  by 
every  adult  male  settler,  256  in  number.  It  provided  for 
a  court  of  twelve  "judges,"  chosen  by  manhood  suffrage  in 
the  several  stations.  If  dissatisfied  with  its  representative, 
a  station  might  at  any  time  hold  a  new  election  (the  modern 
"recall").  Like  the  early  Watauga  "commissioners,"  the 
"judges"  exercised  all  powers  of  government.  The  con 
stitution,  however,  expressly  recognized  the  right  of  North 
Carolina  to  rule  the  district  when  she  should  be  ready ;  and 
in  1783  that  State  organized  the  Cumberland  settlements 
into  Davidson  County. 

A  year  later   (1784)   North  Carolina  ceded  her  western 
lands  to  the  Continental  Congress.     The  Westerners  com 
plained  loudly  that  the  mother-State   had    cast 
them  off,  and  that  the  dilatory  Congress  was  not  ••  state  " 
ready  to   accept    them.     The    three    counties  of  °f  Frank- 
eastern  Tennessee   (about    Watauga)   now    num 
bered    10,000    people.     August    23,    1784,    a    representative 
convention    of  forty    delegates  declared    this    district    an   in 
dependent  State  with  the  name  Frankland  ("Land  of   the 
Free").     A  later  convention  adopted  a  constitution,   and 
a  full  state  government  was  set  up,  with  Sevier  as  governor. 
But  North  Carolina  "repealed"  her  cession   (Congress  not 
having  acted) ;    and  after  some  years  of  struggle  that  rose 
even  into  war,  she  succeeded  in  restoring  her  authority  over 
the    district.      (The   first   legislature  of  Frankland  fixed  a 
currency  "in  kind"  :    a  pound  of  sugar  was  to  pass  as  one 
shilling;    a  fox  or  raccoon  skin  for  two  shillings;    a  gallon 


246  MAKING  THE  SECOND  "WEST" 

of  peach  brandy  for  three  shillings,  and  so  on.  Easterners 
laughed  contemptuously  at  this  "money  which  cannot  be 
counterfeited,"  forgetting  how  their  fathers  had  used  like 
currency.) 

For  some  years,  only  feeble  ties  held  the  Western  settle 
ments  to  the  Atlantic  States.  The  men  of  the  West  made  con- 
Separatist  tinuous  efforts  for  Statehood ;  but  these  efforts 
tendencies  were  opposed  both  by  Virginia  and  North  Caro 
lina  and  also  by  Congress.  Then,  at  one  time  or 
another,  in  each  of  the  three  groups  of  settlements,  these 
legitimate  attempts  merged  obscurely  into  less  justifiable 
plots  for  complete  separation  from  the  Eastern  confederacy. 
For  even  this  extreme  phase  of  the  movement,  there  was 
great  provocation  in  the  gross  neglect  shown  by  the  East 
toward  pressing  needs  in  the  West.  The  older  States  had 
just  rebelled  against  the  colonial  policy  of  Great  Britain, 
but  they  showed  a  strong  inclination  to  retain  a  selfish  policy 
toward  their  own  "colonies."  Even  in  the  matter  of  pro 
tection  against  Indians,  they  hampered  the  frontier  without 
giving  aid.  The  Westerners  made  many  petitions  (1)  to 
control  directly  their  own  militia ;  (2)  to  be  divided  into 
smaller  counties  —  with  courts  more  accessible ;  and  (3)  to 
Eastern  have  a  "court  of  appeal"  established  on  their  side 
neglect  and  of  the  mountains.  Many  a  poor  man  found  legal 
redress  for  wrong  impossible  because  a  richer  op 
ponent  could  appeal  to  a  seaboard  supreme  court.  These 
reasonable  requests  were  refused  by  North  Carolina,  and 
granted  only  grudgingly  by  Virginia.  More  distant  Eastern 
communities,  too,  notably  New  England,  manifested  a  harsh 
jealousy  of  the  WTest. 

In  particular  the  East  long  neglected  to  secure  for  the  new 
West  the  right  to  use  the  lower  Mississippi.  For  nearly  all 
The  demand  its  course,  one  bank  of  the  Mississippi  was  Ameri- 
mouthof  can;  kut»  by  the  treaties  of  1783,  toward  the 
the  Mis-  mouth  both  banks  were  Spain's.  According  to 
sissippi  the  commercial  policy  of  past  ages,  Spain  could 
close  against  us  this  commercial  outlet.  But  the  sur 
plus  farm  produce  of  the  West  could  not  be  carried  to 


SEPARATIST  MOVEMENTS  IN  THE  SOUTHWEST     247 

the  East  over  bridlepaths.  Without  some  route  to  the 
outside  world,  it  was  valueless ;  and  the  only  possible  route 
in  that  day  was  the  huge  arterial  system  of  natural  water 
ways  to  the  Gulf.  So,  from  the  first,  the  backwoodsmen 
floated  their  grain  and  stock  in  flatboats  down  the  smaller 
streams  to  the  Ohio,  and  so  on  down  the  great  central  river 
to  New  Orleans.  They  encountered  shifting  shoals,  hidden 
snags,  treacherous  currents,  savage  ambuscades,  and  the 
hardships  and  dangers  of  wearisome  return  on  foot  through 
the  Indian-haunted  forests.  These  natural  perils  the 
frontiersman  accepted  light-heartedly ;  but  he  was  moved 
to  bitter  wrath,  when  —  his  journey  accomplished  —  fatal 
harm  befell  him  at  his  port.  He  had  to  have  "right  of 
deposit"  at  New  Orleans,  in  order  to  reship  to  ocean  vessels. 
Spanish  governors  granted  or  withheld  that  privilege  at 
pleasure  —  to  extort  bribes  or  gratify  a  grudge. 

Our  government  showed  little  eagerness  in  this  life-or- 
death  matter;  but  the  West  seethed  with  furious  demands 
for  possession  of  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi.  How  to  get 
it  mattered  little.  The  Westerners  would  help  Congress  win 
it  from  Spain ;  or  they  were  ready  to  try  to  win  it  by  them 
selves,  setting  up,  if  need  be,  as  a  separate  nation ;  or  some 
of  them  were  ready  even  to  buy  the  essential  privilege  by 
putting  their  settlements  under  the  Spanish  flag.  The  last 
measure  was  never  discussed  publicly ;  but  Sevier,  Robert 
son,  and  Clark  were  all  at  some  time  concerned  secretly  in 
dubious  negotiations  with  Spanish  agents.  American 
nationality  was  just  in  the  making.  It  was  natural  for 
even  good  men  to  look  almost  exclusively  to  the  welfare 
of  their  own  section,  and  the  action  of  these  great  leaders 
does  not  expose  them  to  charges  of  lack  of  patriotism  in  any 
shameful  sense,  —  as  would  be  the  case  in  a  later  day. 
These  men  must  not  be  confounded  with  a  fellow  like 
General  Wilkinson,  who  while  an  American  officer,  took  a 
pension  from  Spain  for  assisting  her  interests  in  the  West. 
Still  it  was  well  that,  about  1790,  they  were  statehood 
pushed  aside  by  a  new  generation  of  immigrants,  secufed 
who  were  able  to  "think  continen tally."  Virginia  and 


248  MAKING  THE  SECOND  "WEST" 

North  Carolina,  too,  were  finally  persuaded  to  give  up  their 
claims.  In  1792  Kentucky  became  a  State  of  the  Union, 
and,  four  years  later,  Tennessee  was  admitted.  The  re 
maining  lands  south  of  the  Ohio  that  had  been  ceded  by 
that  time  to  the  United  States  were  then  organized  as  the 
Mississippi  Territory. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE   NORTHWEST:  A   NATIONAL   DOMAIN 

THE  Southwest,  we  have  seen,  was  a  self-developed  section. 
Except  for  Henderson's  futile  project,  there  was  no  paternal 
ism.  No  statesman  planned  its  settlements;  no  general 
directed  the  conquest  of  territory;  no  older  government, 
State  or  Federal,  fostered  development.  The  land  was  won 
from  savage  man  and  savage  nature  by  little  bands  of  self- 
associated  backwoodsmen,  piece  by  piece,  from  the  Watauga 
to  the  Rio  Grande,  in  countless  bloody  but  isolated  skir 
mishes,  generation  after  generation.  Settlement  preceded 
governmental  organization. 

In  the  Northwest,  settlement  did  not  begin  until  after 
the  Revolution,   and  government  preceded  settlement.     The 
first     colonists    found     (1)     territorial    divisions  Government 
marked  off,  and  the  form  of  government  largely  precedes 
determined ;     (2)    land     surveys    ready    for    the  s 
farmer;    and   (3)   some    military  protection.     All   this  was 
arranged   in  advance   by  the  national    government.     This 
child  of  the  nation,  therefore,  never  showed  the  tendencies 
to  separatism  which  we  have  noted  in  the  Southwest. 

Six  States  could  make  no  claim  to  any  part  of  the  West, 
-  Maryland,    Pennsylvania,   Delaware,  New  Jersey,  New 
Hampshire,  and  Rhode  Island ;  and  the  title  of  Conflictin 
South   Carolina  applied  only  to  a  strip  of   land  claims  to 
some    twenty  miles   wide.     But,  as   soon   as  the 
Revolution  began,  the  other  six  States  reasserted 
loudly  old  colonial  claims  to  all  the  vast  region  between 
the  mountains  and  the  Mississippi.     They  planned  to  use 
these  lands,  too,  in  paying  their  soldiers  and  other  war  ex 
penses,  while  the  small  States    taxed    themselves  in  hard 
cash   for   the  war   which    was   to   win   the   territory   from 
England. 

£49 


250  THE  OLD  NORTHWEST 

North  of  the  Ohio,  too,  the  claims  were  conflicting. 
Virginia  claimed  all  the  Northwest,  under  her  old  charter, 
and  she  had  done  much  to  give  real  life  to  this  weak  title 
by  taking  steps  toward  actual  possession  —  in  Dunmore's 
War  and  in  Clark's  conquest  of  Illinois,  and,  from  1779  to 
1784,  by  governing  the  district  from  Vincennes  to  Kaskaskia 
as  the  County  of  Illinois.  New  York  also  claimed  all  the 
Northwest,  but  by  the  slightest  of  all  titles.  The  middle 
The  Mary-  third  of  the  Northwest  was  claimed  also  by  both 
trine  d°a~  Massachusetts  and  Connecticut  on  the  basis  of 
common  their  ancient  charters. 

be  made' *°  While  opposing  these  "large  State"  claims, 
into  new  Maryland  invented  a  new  and  glorious  colonial 
states  policy  for  America,  and,  standing  alone  through  a 

stubborn  four-year  struggle,  she  forced  the  Union  to  adopt 
it.  As  early  as  November,  1776,  a  Maryland  Convention 
set  forth  this  resolution  :  — 

"  That  the  back  lands,  claimed  by  the  British  crown,  if  secured 
by  the  blood  and  treasure  of  all,  ought,  in  reason,  justice,  and 
policy,  to  be  considered  a  common  stock,  to  be  parcelled  out  by 
Congress  into  free,  convenient,  and  independent  Governments, 
as  the  wisdom  of  that  body  shall  hereafter  direct." 

A  year  later,  since  Congress  had  failed  to  adopt  this  policy, 
Maryland  made  it  a  condition  without  which  she  would  not 
ratify  the  Articles  of  Confederation.  By  February,  1779, 
every  other  State  had  ratified,  but  by  the  terms  of  the  Arti 
cles,  that  constitution  could  not  become  binding  until  ratified 
by  each  one  of  the  thirteen  States.  Further  delay  was  in 
many  ways  perilous  to  the  new  Union ;  and  other  States 
charged  Maryland  bitterly  with  lack  of  patriotism.  Vir 
ginia,  in  particular,  insinuated  repeatedly  that  the  western 
lands  were  only  an  "ostensible  cause"  for  her  delay.  With 
clear-eyed  purpose,  however,  the  little  State  held  out, 
throwing  the  blame  for  delay  where  it  belonged,  —  on 
Virginia  and  the  other  States  claiming  the  West.  At  this 
time  Thomas  Paine  performed  one  more  great  service  to 
America.  Though  a  citizen  of  Virginia,  he  published  a 


A,  Connecticut's  Western  Reserve 

B.  Virginia's  Military  Reserve 


THE  UNITED  STATES  IN  1783  — STATE  CLAIMS  AND  CESSIONS 


STATE  CESSIONS 

valiant  plea  for  the  Maryland  plan  —  and  lost  his  chance 
for  a  grant  of  lands,  —  all  that  stood  between  him  and 
poverty. 

Public  opinion  gradually  shifted  to  the  support  of  the  view 
so  gallantly  championed  by  Maryland ;  and  October  10, 1780, 
the  Continental  Congress  formally  pledged  the  Union 
to  the  new  policy.     A  Congressional  resolution  sol- 
emnly  urged  the  States  to  cede  the  western  lands  fa|th  to. 
to  the  central  government,  to  be  disposed  of  "for 
the  common  good  of  the  United  States."     The  resolution 
guaranteed  also  that  all  lands  so  ceded  would  be  "formed 
into  separate  republican  States,  which  shall  become  mem 
bers  of  the  federal  union  and  have  the  same  rights  of  free 
dom,  sovereignty,  and  independence  as  the  other  States." 

This  completed  the  American  plan  of  colonization.  Pre 
viously,  the  world  had  known  only  two  plans :  Greek  and 
Phoenician  colonies  became  free  by  separating  at  once  from 
the  mother  cities ;  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  century 
colonies  of  European  countries  had  remained  united  to  the 
mother  countries,  but  in  a  condition  of  humiliating  de 
pendence.  For  the  United  States  Maryland  had  devised  a 
new  plan  combining  permanent  union  with  freedom.  This 
great  political  invention  was  peculiarly  adapted  to  a  federal 
union,  such  as  America  was  then  forming. 

New  York  had  already  promised  to  give  up  her  western 
claims,  and  now  Connecticut  promised  to  do  likewise.     In 
January,   1781,  Virginia's    promise    followed,  for  state 
the  lands  north  of  the  Ohio.     The  formal  deeds  of  sessions 
cession  were    delayed    by   long    negotiations    over    precise 
terms,  but  the  general  result  was  now  certain.     Maryland 
had  won.     Accordingly   (March   1,   1781),  she  ratified  the 
Articles.     That  constitution  at  last  went  into  operation,  — 
and  the  new  confederacy  possessed  a  "national  domain." 

Kentucky  remained  part  of  Virginia  until  admitted  into  the 
Union  as  a  State  in  1792 ;  and  Virginia  did  not  actually  cede  the 
Northwest  until  1784, — retaining  then  the  "Military  Reserve" 


THE  OLD  NORTHWEST 

(a  triangular  tract  of  several  million  acres  just  north  of  the 
Ohio)  wherewith  to  pay  her  soldiers.  Connecticut  completed  her 
cession  in  1785,  and  Massachusetts  made  hers  in  1786.  Connec 
ticut  retained  3,250,000  acres  south  of  Lake  Erie,  as  a  basis  for  a 
public  school  fund.  This  district  was  soon  settled  largely  by  New 
Englanders,  and  was  long  known  as  "The  Western  Reserve"; 
but  in  1800,  when  Connecticut  had  sold  her  property  in  the  lands, 
she  granted  jurisdiction  over  the  settlers  to  the  United  States. 
North  Carolina  ceded  Tennessee  in  1790,  and  South  Carolina  had 
given  up  her  little  tract  three  years  earlier;  but  Georgia  clung 
to  her  claims  until  1802. 

It  was  now  up  to  Congress  to  make  good  its  promise  in  the 
resolution  of  October,  1780.  Accordingly,  when  Thomas 
The  Ordi-  Jefferson,  as  a  Virginia  delegate  in  Congress,  pre- 
nanceof  sented  to  that  body  Virginia's  final  cession,  he 

also  proposed  a  plan  of  government  for  all  terri 
tory  "ceded  or  to  be  ceded."  This  plan  was  soon  en 
acted  into  law  and  is  commonly  known  as  the  Ordinance 
of  1784. 

Jefferson  supposed  that  the  States  would  complete  their 
cessions  promptly.  Accordingly,  the  Ordinance  of  1784  cut 
up  all  the  western  territory  into  fourteen  proposed  States,  - 
Michigania,  Mesopotamia,  Polypotamia,  Assenisipia,  and 
so  on.  As  in  all  our  later  organization  of  Territories, 
certain  provisions  were  to  be  made  a  matter  of  compact 
between  each  new  State  and  the  United  States;  and  a 
remarkable  attempt  was  made  to  exclude  slavery  from  all 

the  Western  territory  after  the  year  1800.  This 
tempt  to  provision,  however,  received  the  votes  of  only  six 
exclude  States,  and  so  failed  of  adoption.  Virginia  (in 

spite  of  Jefferson)  and  South  Carolina  voted  No ; 
North  Carolina  was  "divided"  and  so  not  counted;  New 
Jersey,  Delaware,  and  Georgia  were  absent.  Jefferson 
stated  later  that,  but  for  the  sickness  of  a  delegate  from 
New  Jersey,  that  State  would  have  been  present  and  in  the 
affirmative;  so  that  the  proposition  "failed  for  want  of 
one  vote." 

In  1787  the  Ordinance  of  1784  was  replaced  by  the  great 


THE  ORDINANCE  OF  1787  253 

Northwest  Ordinance.  During  the  three  years  which  had 
passed  since  the  adoption  of  the  first  ordinance,  there  had 
been  no  district  in  the  ceded  territory  populous  enough  to 
organize  under  the  law.  Meantime,  some  parts  of  the  East 
had  begun  to  look  jealously  at  the  prospect  of  so  many  new 
States,  to  outvote  the  Atlantic  section  in  Congress.  Con 
gress,  therefore,  appointed  a  committee  to  prepare  a  new 
plan  of  organization,  with  view  particularly  to  reducing 
the  number  of  future  States. 

There  was  also  another  thread  to  the  story.  In  1786 
a  number  of  New  England  Revolutionary  soldiers  had 
organized  a  "companv  of  associates,"  to  establish  , 

•  i  •  i  .1        s^.1  •  T^      i  Manasseh 

themselves  m  new  homes  on  the  Ohio.     Early  in  cutler  and 
1787  this  Ohio  Company  sent  the  shrewd  Manasseh  the  Ohio 
Cutler  (one  of    their    directors)    to  buy   a  large 
tract  of  western  land  from   Congress.      Cutler  found   the 
proposed  Territorial  ordinance  under  discussion.     Negotia 
tions  for  the  land   deal  and  for  the   new  Territorial  law 
(under  which  the  settlers  would  have  to  place  themselves) 
became  intermingled.     Cutler    proved  an  adroit  lobbyist. 
On  one  occasion  he  had  to  frighten  the  hesitating  Congress 
into  action  by  pretending  to  take  leave ;  but  finally  both 
measures  were  passed.     The   Ordinance,  with  a  number  of 
new  provisions   satisfactory   to  the  New   Englanders,   be 
came  law  on  July  13.     A  few  days  later  the  land  sale  was 
completed. 

The  Ohio  Company  bought  for  itself  1,500,000  acres,  at 
"two-thirds  of  a  dollar  an  acre."  Payment  was  accepted, 
however,  in  depreciated  "certificates"  with  which  Congress 
had.  paid  the  Revolutionary  soldiers,  so  that  the  real  cost 
was  only  eight  or  nine  cents.  Unhappily,  the  purchase 
was  carried  through  by  connecting  it  with  a  "job."  In 
fluential  members  of  Congress,  as  the  price  of  their  support, 
induced  Cutler  to  take,  at  this  rate,  not  merely  the  million 
and  a  half  acres  which  he  wanted,  but  also  three  and  a  half 
million  more,  which  were  afterward  privately  transferred 
to  another  "company"  composed  of  these  congressmen 
and  their  friends. 


254  THE  OLD  NORTHWEST 

This  taint  of  graft,  of  course,  had  nothing  to  do  with  the 
ordinance  for  organizing  the  territory.  The  "Northwest 
The  "char-  Ordinance"  (so-called  because,  unlike  its  prede- 
ter "  of  the  cessor,  it  applied  only  to  the  territory  north  of  the 
ony*"  of  the  Ohio)  nas  been  styled  second  in  importance  only 
United  to  the  Declaration  of  Independence  and  the  Con 
stitution.  Under  it,  the  new  type  of  American 
"colony"  ("territory")  was  first  actually  established.  Not 
less  than  three,  nor  more  than  five  states  were  to  be  formed 
from  the  region,  but,  until  further  Congressional  action,  the 
whole  district  was  to  be  one  unit.  Until  the  district  should 
contain  five  thousand  free  male  inhabitants,  there  was  no  self- 
government.  Congress1  appointed  a  "governor"  and  three 
"judges."  The  governor  created  and  filled  all  local  offices; 
and  governor  and  judges  together  selected  laws  suitable 
for  Territorial  needs  from  the  codes  of  older  States,  — 
subject,  however,  to  the  veto  of  Congress.  When  the 
population  had  risen  to  the  specified  point,  there  was  to 
be  a  two-House  legislature,  —  a  House  of  Representatives 
elected  by  the  people,  and  a  Legislative  Council  of  five  men 
selected  by  Congress  from  ten  nominated  by  the  Territorial 
lower  House.  This  legislature  was  to  send  a  Territorial  dele 
gate  to  Congress,  with  right  to  debate  but  not  to  vote.  The 
governor,  still  appointed  by  Congress,  had  an  absolute  veto 
upon  all  acts  of  the  legislature  and  controlled  its  sittings, 
calling  and  dissolving  sessions  at  will.  Thus,  in  this  stage, 
the  inhabitants  had  about  the  same  amount  of  self-govern 
ment  as  in  a  royal  province  before  the  Revolution.  But 
the  characteristic  American  idea  appeared  in  the  following 
words:  "Whenever  any  of  the  said  States  shall  have 
sixty  thousand  free  inhabitants,  such  State  shall  be  ad 
mitted,  by  its  delegates,  into  the  Congress  of  the  United 
States,  on  an  equal  footing  with  the  original  States  in  all 
respects  whatever,  and  shall  be  at  liberty  to  form  a  per 
manent  constitution  and  State  government." 

1  This  law  was  passed,  of  course,  by  the  Continental  Congress.  After  the 
adoption  of  the  Constitution,  the  next  year,  many  powers  here  given  to  Congress 
were  transferred  to  the  President  of  the  United  States. 


PROVISION  FOR  EDUCATION  255 

Then  followed  six  articles,  "for  extending  the  fundamental 
principles  of  civil  and  religious  liberty  .  .  .  [and]  to  ... 
establish  those  principles  as  the  basis  of  all  ...  its "  bill 
governments  which  forever  hereafter  shall  be  of  rights" 
formed  in  the  said  territory."  These  articles  were  declared 
to  be  "articles  of  compact  between  the  original  States  and 
the  people  ...  in  the  said  Territory  .  .  .  forever  [to]  re 
main  unalterable,  unless  by  common  consent.'9  To  similar 
provisions  in  the  previous  ordinance  this  noble  "bill  of 
rights"  now  added  freedom  of  religion,  habeas  corpus 
privileges,  exemption  from  cruel  or  unusual  punishments, 
and  jury  trial.  The  Third  Article  declared  that  "schools 
and  the  means  of  education  shall  forever  be  encouraged"; 
and  the  great  Sixth  Article  prohibited  slavery,  with  a  pro 
vision,  however,  for  the  return  of  fugitive  slaves  escaping 
into  the  Northwest  from  other  States. 

The  Northwest  Ordinance  did  not  make  specific  provision 
for  public  support  of  education.  That  was  done  by  two 
other  ordinances  which  made  smooth  the  way  for  western 
settlement  and  profoundly  influenced  its  character. 

1.  In  1785  Congress  had  passed  an  ordinance  (originat 
ing  with  Jefferson)  (1)  providing  for  a  rectangular  land 
survey  by  the  government,  in  advance  of  settle- 

11-1-         i         i      rr»  P  IP         i        Jefferson's 

ment,  and  establishing  land  offices  tor  sale  ot  pub-  land  survey 
lie  lands  at  low  prices  and  in  small  lots ;  and  (2) 
giving    one    thirty-sixth   of    the    national   domain 
(section  16  in  each  township)  to  the  new  States,  for  the  sup 
port  of  public  schools.     An  attempt  to  set  aside  And  pro_ 
section  15  of  each  township  for  the  support  of  re-  vision  for 
ligion   was   voted   down ;    but  these   other  prin-  scho° 
ciples   remained   fundamental   in  Western   development. 

The  intention  was  to  have  each  township  use  the  proceeds  from 
its  section  16  for  its  own  schools.  Happily,  it  was  soon  decided 
to  give  the  sale  of  school  lands  to  State  officials,  rather  than  to 
local  officers,  and  to  turn  all  proceeds  into  a  permanent  State  fund, 
of  which  only  the  interest  is  divided  each  year  among  various 
localities  of  the  State,  usually  in  proportion  to  their  school  attend- 


256 


THE  OLD  NORTHWEST 


ance.  The  States  admitted  since  1842  have  received  also  section 
36  of  each  township  for  school  purposes,  or  one  eighteenth  of  the 
land  within  their  limits,  besides  lavish  grants  for  internal  improve 
ments. 

The  rectangular  survey  made  it  possible  for  a  pioneer  to  locate 
land  without  the  costly  aid  of  a  private  survey.  Previous  to  this 
law  of  1785,  surveys  had  been  irregular,  overlapping  in  some  places, 
and  in  others  leaving  large  fractions  unincorporated  in  any 
"  description."  The  points  of  beginning,  too,  had  been  arbitrarily 

chosen,  and,  if  once  lost,  they 
were  hard  to  determine  again. 
At  almost  the  date  of  this  ordi 
nance,  the  records  of  Jefferson 
County  in  Kentucky  describe 
the  land  of  Abraham  Lincoln's 
grandfather  as  located  on  a 
fork  of  the  Long  Run,  begin 
ning  about  two  miles  up  from 
the  mouth  of  the  fork,  "at  a 
Sugar  Tree  standing  in  the  side 
of  the  same  marked  S  D  B  and 
extending  thence  East  300 
poles  to  a  Poplar  and  Sugar 
Tree  North  213^  poles  to  a 
Beech  and  Dogwood  West  300 
poles  to  a  White  Oak  and  Hick 
ory  South  213^  poles  to  the 
Beginning."  The  older  por 
tions  of  the  country  still  keep 
these  cumbersome  and  imper 
fect  descriptions. 


MANASSEH  CUTLER,  "Father"  of  State 
Universities,  from  a  woodcut  in  an 
article  on  early  Ohio  in  Harper's  Maga 
zine,  September,  1885. 


National 
land  grants 


2.  The  other  great  act  of  the  dying  Continental  Congress 
which  deserves  grateful  remembrance  was  passed  a  few  days 
after  the  Northwest  Ordinance.  Cutler  was  not 
content  even  with  the  generous  terms  he  had 
secured  for  the  Ohio  Company ;  and  he  obtained 
a  further  free  grant  of  forty-six  thousand  acres 
"of  good  land"  in  the  proposed  Territory  "for  the  support 
of  an  institution  of  higher  learning,"  -the  land  to  be  lo 
cated,  and  funds  used,  "as  the  future  legislature  of  the 


SETTLEMENT  AND  ORGANIZATION 


257 


proposed  settlement  may  direct."  Here  begins  the  policy 
of  national  land  grants  to  "State  universities."  When  the 
Territory  of  Indiana  was  set  off  on  the  West,  a  like  grant 
was  made  for  it ;  and  so  on,  for  each  new  Territory  since. 
After  1873,  such  grants  to  new  Territories  were  doubled  in 
amount  —  thanks  to  a  curious  persistence  for  a  second  grant 
by  early  Minnesota,  which  had  largely  wasted  its  first  grant. 


•nffeb 


AN  OHIO  MILL,  built  soon  after  1790. 

The  Ohio  Company  eagerly  pressed  its  preparations  for 
settlement,  and  advertised  the  riches  of  the  West  extrava 
gantly,  to  sell  its  lands ;  and  in  the  winter  of  The  second 
1787-1788,  fifty  New  Englanders  under  General  Mayflower 
Putnam  made  the  western  journey  as  far  as  Fort  Pitt 
(Pittsburg).  Here  they  built  a  huge  boat,  with  sides  pro 
tected  by  bullet-proof  bulwarks,  naming  it  the  Mayflower 
in  memory  of  their  forefathers'  migration  to  a  new  world. 
As  soon  as  the  ice  broke  up,  they  floated  down  the  Ohio  to 
the  mouth  of  the  Muskingum,  and  there  founded  Marietta. 
Various  hamlets  soon  clustered  about  this  first  settlement, 


258  THE  OLD  NORTHWEST 

-  each,  as  a  rule,  centered  about  a  mill,  —  and  within  two 
years  the  colony  contained  a  thousand  people.  Thousands 
more  floated  past  Marietta  during  its  first  season,  most  of 
them  bound  for  Kentucky,  but  many  to  establish  them 
selves  at  points  in  the  Northwest. 

For  many  years,  migration  continued  to  be  by  wagon  to 
Pittsburg  or  Wheeling,  and  thence  by  water  on  hundred- 
Later  settle-  foot  rafts  carrying  cattle  and  small  houses,  or  on 
ment  somewhat  more  manageable  flatboats  seventy  feet 

long  perhaps.  Such  vehicles  were  steered  from  rocks  and 
sand  bars  by  long  "sweeps."  They  floated  lazily  with  the 
current  by  day,  and  tied  up  at  the  bank  at  night.  Occasion 
ally,  long  narrow  keel  boats  were  used ;  and  these  were  es 
pecially  convenient,  because,  by  the  brawny  arms  of  seven 
or  eight  men,  they  could  be  poled  up  tributary  streams,  to 
choice  points  of  settlement.  For  a  time,  settlement  was 
hampered  by  frequent  Indian  forays.  The  wars  that  fol 
lowed,  however,  were  managed  by  the  Federal  government, 
with  regiments  of  "regulars."  In  1790  and  1791,  expeditions 
against  the  Indians  were  repulsed  disastrously  —  the  second 
costing  more  than  half  the  American  force.  But  in  1794 
General  Wayne  inflicted  a  crushing  defeat  upon  the  natives ; 
and,  the  same  year,  a  new  treaty  with  England  secured  to 
the  United  States  actual  possession  of  the  Northwest  posts. 
This  deprived  the  Indians  of  all  hope  of  English  support,1 
and  they  ceased  to  molest  settlement  seriously  until  just 
before  the  War  of  1812. 

The  second  stage  of  Territorial  government,  with  a  repre 
sentative  legislature,  did  not  begin  until  1799.  The  next 


1  American  writers  used  to  assume  that  the  early  Indian  forays  were  directly 
fomented  by  the  English  officials  in  the  Northwest  posts.  No  doubt  the  pres 
ence  of  English  troops  there  did  have  some  effect  upon  Indian  hopes.  But  after 
a  careful  examination  of  recently  opened  sources  of  information,  Professor  Andrew 
McLaughlin  writes:  "I  am  glad  to  be  able  to  state  .  .  .  that  England  and  her 
ministers  can  be  absolutely  acquitted  of  the  charge  that  they  desired  to  foment 
war  in  the  West.  .  .  .  There  was  never  a  time  when  the  orders  of  the  home  govern 
ment  did  not  explicitly  direct  that  war  was  to  be  deprecated,  and  that  the  Indians 
were  to  be  encouraged  to  keep  the  peace."  Report  of  American  Historical  Associ 
ation  for  189 >4,  435  ff. 


ADVANCE 

OF 
POPULATION 


BOUNDS  OF  SETTLED  AREA  IN  1774'" 
FRONTIER  LINE  1790 
FRONTIER  LINE  1820 


SETTLEMENT  AND  ORGANIZATION  259 

year  Congress  divided  the  district  into  two  "Territories." 
In  1802  the  eastern  Territory  was  admitted  to  the  Union 
as  the  State  of  Ohio.  The  western  district  became  the  Ter 
ritory  of  Indiana. 

The  early  Western  settlements,  we  have  seen,  reproduced 
the  simplicity  of  the  first  settlements  on  the  Atlantic  coast 
a  century  and  a  half  before ;  and  the  progress  of  The  mean- 
the  new  communities  was  influenced  greatly  by  ins  °.f  ^e 
the  experience  of  the  older  ones.     But  the  West-  American 
ern    societies    did  not   merely  copy  Eastern    de-  history 
velopment.     They  did  not  begin   just  where  the  Atlantic 
seaboard     settlements     did.      They    started    on    a    different 
plane  and  with  greater  momentum.     The  Atlantic  frontier 
had  to  work    upon  European    germs.     Moving    westward, 
each  new  frontier  was  more   and   more  American,  at  the 
start ;  and  soon  the  older  communities  were  reacted  upon 
wholesomely  by  the  simplicity  and  democracy  of  the  West. 
These    considerations     give    the    key    to    the   meaning    of 
the  West  in  American  history.     Says  Frederic  J.  Turner, 
the  first  interpreter  of  the  West  in  our  history  :  — 

"American  social  development  has  been  continually  beginning 
over  again  on  the  frontier.  This  perennial  rebirth,  this  fluidity  of 
American  life,  this  expansion  westward  with  its  new  opportunities, 
this  continuous  touch  with  the  simplicity  of  primitive  society, 
furnish  the  forces  dominating  American  character.  .  .  .  The 
frontier  is  the  line  of  most  rapid  and  effective  Americanization." 


PART  V  — THE  CONSTITUTION  AND  THE  FEDERALISTS 
CHAPTER  XIV 

THE   "LEAGUE    OF   FRIENDSHIP" 

THE  motion  in  Congress  for  Independence,  on  June  7, 
1776,  contained  also  a  resolution  that  a  "plan  of  confedera 
tion"  be  prepared  and  submitted  to  the  States.     A 

The  Articles  . 

ofConfeder-  committee  was  appointed  at  once  to  draw  up  a 
r*tifi  d  plan.  Not  till  November,  1777,  however,  did 
Congress  adopt  the  Articles  of  Confederation;  and 
ratification  by  the  States  was  not  secured  until  1781  (page 
251),  when  the  war  was  virtually  over.  From  '76  to  '81, 
Congress  exercised  the  powers  of  a  central  government. 
The  States  had  not  expressly  authorized  it  to  do  so,  but  they 
acquiesced,  informally,  because  of  the  supreme  necessity. 

During  those  years  were  the  States  one  nation  or  thirteen? 
No  one  at  the  time  thought  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
Character  binding  upon  any  State  because  of  the  action  at 
°f  th.e  „  Philadelphia,  but  only  because  of  the  instructions 
from  1781  or  ratification  by  the  State  itself.  Congress 
to  1789  na(j  noj-  even  advised  the  States  on  Independ 
ence.  It  waited  for  the  States  to  instruct  their  delegates. 
Then  the  vote  was  taken  by  States,  and  the  delegates  of 
no  State  voted  for  the  Declaration  until  authorized  by 
their  own  State  Assembly.  The  action  at  Philadelphia 
on  July  4,  1776,  amounted  to  a  joint  announcement, 
in  order,  in  Franklin's  phrase,  that  they  might  all  "hang 
together,"  so  as  not  to  "hang  separately."  Twenty  years 
afterward,  in  a  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States,  Justice  Chase  said:  "I  regard  this  [the  Declaration 
of  July  4,  1776]  a  declaration  not  that  the  united  colonies 
in  a  collective  capacity  were  independent  States,  but  that 

260 


ONE  PEOPLE  OR  THIRTEEN  261 

each  of   them   was  a  sovereign   and  independent   State"   (3 
Dallas,  224). 

The  final  paragraph  of  the  Declaration  refers  to   "the 
authority  of  the  good  people  of  these  colonies";    and,  in 
later  times,  that  one  phrase    has   been  tortured  TheDecia- 
into  proof  that  the  Declaration  was  the  act  of  ™!ionof, 

i  -i  j.-  c-       i,  •          Independ- 

one  people,  —  a  single    nation.     Such    reasoning  ence  and 
ignores  three  longer  phrases  in  the  same  para-  the  states 
graph  which  teach  more    emphatically  the  opposite   doc 
trine,  —  of  thirteen    peoples.     The   signed  copy,  too,  was 
headed  "The  unanimous  Declaration  of  the  thirteen  United 
States." 

It  would  be  unwise,  however,  to  draw  conclusions  from 
the  wording  of  this  document  alone,  even  were  that  wording 
in  agreement  throughout.  The  men  of  '76  had  not  yet 
learned  to  use  the  terms,  independence,  sovereign,  state, 
nation,  with  the  nice  precision  that  belongs  to  later  days. 
Moreover,  they  were  thinking  just  then  of  the  relations 
of  the  States  to  England,  not  to  one  another.  But  other 
language  —  of  even  the  most  accurate  thinkers  and  most 
earnest  "unionists"  -proves  beyond  doubt  that  men  did 
not  think  of  the  thirteen  States  as  one  nation  in  1776. 
Hamilton  wrote,  in  1784  :  "By  the  Declaration  of  Independ 
ence  of  July  4,  1776,  acceded  to  by  our  Convention  one  people 
of  the  ninth,  the  late  colony  of  New  York  became  or  thirteen 
an  independent  State"  (Works,  Lodge  ed.,  Ill,  470).  The 
Pennsylvania  Convention  in  July,  1776,  approved  the  "co 
gent  reasons"  given  "by  the  honorable  Continental  Congress 
for  declaring  this,  as  well  as  the  other  United  States  of  Amer 
ica  free  and  independent,"  and  asserted  that  "we  will  .  .  . 
maintain  the  freedom  and  independency  of  this  and  the  other 
United  States"  So,  too,  Connecticut  (October,  1776), 
when  adopting  her  old  charter  for  a  constitution,  de 
clared,  "This  Republic  [viz.,  Connecticut]  is  ...  a  free, 
sovereign,  and  independent  State."  In  all  these  early 
statements,  the  word  United  in  "  United  States  "  is  merely 
an  adjective. 

More   than   half   a  century   later   there   dawned   a  long 


262  THE   CRITICAL  PERIOD,    1783-1788 

struggle  —  finally  to  be  settled  by  the  sword  —  between 
Union  and  Disunion.  Meantime  the  early  principle  of 
Union  had  been  growing  stronger  and  more  pervasive,  until 
it  had  become  the  truth  most  essential  to  the  political  life 
of  our  people.  The  progressive  side  in  the  long  conflict 
took  its  stand  upon  this  truth;  and,  with  a  common  in 
stinct  of  our  people,  they  tried  to  date  that  truth  back 
further  than  it  really  belonged,  so  as  to  claim  for  it  the 
sanction  of  age  — as  reformers  of  the  English-speaking 
race  have  ever  tried  to  persuade  themselves  that  they  were 
only  trying  to  get  back  to  the  "  good  old  days  of  King 
Edward."  The  splendid  names  of  Story  and  Lincoln  became 
connected  with  the  mistaken  doctrine  that  the  Union  was 
older  than  the  States.  To  the  North,  this  blunder  finally 
became  identified  with  patriotism ;  and  for  two  generations 
after  the  Civil  War  it  was  taught  in  textbooks. 

The  present  generation  has  not  known  the  terrible  danger 
of  disunion,  and  can  look  more  calmly  at  the  theories.  We 
can  all  see  now  that  the  real  basis  for  Lincoln's  stand  was 
not  any  theory  about  the  past,  but  the  need  and  will  of 
a  living  people.  Still  we  must  not  assert  dogmatically  that 
the  States  were  older  than  the  Union  —  and  leave  the 
delicate  question  so.  When  we  look  at  the  actions  of  the 
time  as  well  as  at  its  words,  we  see  that  States  and  Union 
grew  up  together.  True,  the  States  took  form  fastest  and 
first :  but,  from  the  beginning,  there  was  a  general  expec 
tation  that  they  would  soon  be  united.  Except  for  some 
such  expectation,  they  would  hardly  have  been  born  at  all : 
and  except  for  the  creation  of  a  union,  they  certainly  could 
not  have  lived.  The  Union  did  not  create  the  States; 
but  it  did  preserve  them. 

Just  after  July  4,  1776,  there  was  nothing  but  common 
sense  to  keep  any  State  from  acting  as  an  independent 
nation.  Some  of  them  did  act  so,  even  in  foreign  relations. 
Virginia  negotiated  with  Spain  about  the  protection  of  their 
common  trading  interests  in  the  West ;  and  she  even  thought 
it  necessary  for  her  legislature  to  confirm  the  treaty  made  by 
Congress  with  France  in  1778.  But,  on  the  whole,  with 


CONGRESS  AND  THE  STATES  263 

great  good  sense,  the  States  allowed  their  possible  independence 
to  lapse  by  disuse.  As  a  rule,  Congress  managed  the  war 
and  all  foreign  relations ;  and  this  practice  was  soon  made 
the  constitutional  theory  by  the  ratification  of  the  Articles  of 
Confederation. 

The  years  1783-1788  were  "  The  Critical  Period:9  When 
the  war  for  Independence  closed,  it  became  plain  that  the  real 
dangers  to  American  union  were  three:  the  weakness  of  the 
Central  Government,  conflicts  between  the  States,  and  anarchy 
within  individual  States. 

The  authority  of  Congress  was  really  less  after  1781  than  be 
fore.  The  war  was  practically  over,  and  the  States  no  longer 
felt  it  necessary  to  obey  a  central  power.  More  weaknesses 
and  more,  the  wish  for  nationality  was  lost  in  a  of  Congress 
narrow  State  patriotisjn.  In  the  generous  glow  of  the  first 
years  of  revolution,  Patrick  Henry  had  once  exclaimed  :  "I 
am  no  longer  a  Virginian  :  I  am  an  American."  But  about 
1781  the  language  of  State  sovereignty  became  almost  uni 
versal.  Henry  would  now  have  been  loath  to  call  himself 
"  an  American  first"  ;  and  in  the  Virginia  Assembly,  Richard 
Henry  Lee  spoke  of  Congress  as  "a  foreign  power."  The 
weakness  of  that  gathering  became  notorious  and  shameful. 
Able  and  ambitious  men  left  it  for  places  in  State  legislatures. 
In  1785  and  1786,  for  more  than  half  its  sessions,  not  enough 
members  to  do  business  could  be  got  together.  The  treaty 
of  1783  had  to  be  ratified  within  six  months  of  its  signing  at 
Paris ;  but  three  months  expired  before  the  necessary  nine 
States  were  represented  in  Congress.  Twenty  delegates,  rep 
resenting  only  seven  States,  were  present  when  Washington 
resigned  command  of  the  army.  Rarely  afterward  were 
eleven  States  represented ;  and  often  three  men  (of  the 
twenty  or  twenty -five  present)  could  defeat  any  important 
measure,  —  since  such  measures  required  the  assent  of  nine 
States.  Two  weaknesses  of  Congress  call  for  special  atten 
tion.  It  could  not  negotiate  with  foreign  powers  to  advan 
tage;  and  it  could  not  raise  funds  for  the  bare  necessities 
of  government  at  home. 


264  THE   CRITICAL  PERIOD,   1783-1788 

1.  Congress  had  proven  unable  to  compel  the  States  to 
respect  even  the  treaty  of  peace  with  England  (page  235). 
We  wished  a  further  commercial  treaty,  but  the  irritated 
English  ministry   asked   whether  they   were   to   deal   with 
one   state   or   with   thirteen.     Other   countries,   too,   cared 
little  to  spend  effort  on  negotiations  that  promised  to  be 
waste  paper. 

2.  Congress  was  bankrupt.     For  a  time  it  paid  interest  on 
the  $6,000,000  it  had  borrowed  from  France,  but  only  by 
_    ,  borrowing   $2,000,000   more   from   Holland;    and 

Bankruptcy       ,  '.     .        ,  » 

there  came  a  period  when  it  was  impossible  tor 
Yankee  ingenuity  to  wheedle  more  money  from  friendly 
Frenchman  or  Dutchman.  At  home,  Congress  had  made  no 
pretense  of  paying  even  interest.  Interest-bearing  "certifi 
cates,"  issued  by  Congress  to  pay  off  the  army,  passed  by 
1788  at  twelve  cents  on  the  dollar,  and  the  $240,000,000  of 
paper  currency  was  practically  repudiated.  Congress  could 
get  money  only  by  calling  upon  the  States  for  contributions. 
In  1781,  while  the  war  was  still  going  on,  Congress  called 
for  $5,000,000.  Less  than  a  tenth  was  paid.  Some  States 
ignored  the  call,  and  New  Jersey  defied  it.  During  the 
six  years  1783-1788  (after  the  war),  Congress  made  requi 
sitions  amounting  to  $6,000,000;  but  less  than  $1,000,000 
was  ever  paid. 

This  shame  cannot  be  excused  on  any  plea  of  poverty.  The 
war  had  demoralized  industry ;  but  after  all,  the  main 
difficulty  was  the  desire  of  each  State  to  shift  its  burden 
upon  a  neighbor.  Says  Francis  A.  Walker  (Making  of  the 
Nation,  9)  :  "Our  fathers  at  the  close  of  the  Revolution 
were  not  an  impoverished  people.  They  were  able  to  give 
all  that  was  demanded  of  them.  It  chiefly  was  a  bad 
political  mechanism  which  set  every  man  and  every  State 
to  evading  obligations.  .  .  .  Under  a  thoroughly  false 
system,  such  as  this  was,  it  is  amazing  how  much  meanness 
and  selfishness  will  come  out."  This  judgment  is  proved 
correct  by  the  fact  that  with  a  change  of  political  ma 
chinery  these  evils  vanished. 


INTERNAL  STRIFE  AND  ANARCHY  265 

The  second  great  evil  of  the  period  was  strife  between  the 
States.     A  wise  provision  of  the  Articles  tried  to  make  Con 
gress  the  arbiter  in  disputes  between  States ;   but  strife  be_ 
bitter  jealousies  made  this  provision  a  dead  letter,  tween  the 
Each  State  had  its  line  of  custom  houses  against  state 
all  the  others,  with  all  sorts  of  discriminations,  fruitful  of 
discord.     Connecticut  taxed  goods  from  Massachusetts  more 
than  the  same  articles  from  England,  —  in  hope  of  drawing 
a-way  British  trade  from  the  older  colony ;  and,  on  another 
frontier,  she  waged  a  small  war  with  Pennsylvania  over  the 
ownership  of  the  Wyoming  valley,  while  she  seemed  on  the 
verge  of  war,  for  similar  reasons,  with  New  York  and  New 
Hampshire.     New  York  taxed  ruinously  the  garden  produce 
of  the  New  Jersey  farmers,  who  supplied  her  and  who  had 
no  other  market ;  and  New  Jersey  retaliated  with  a  con- 
fiscatory  tax  of  a  thousand  dollars  upon  a  spot  of  sandy 
coast  which  New  York  had  bought  from  her  for  the  site 
of  a  lighthouse.     South  Carolina  and  Georgia  were  coming 
to  blows  over  the  navigation  of  the  Savannah.     Kentucky, 
Tennessee,   Vermont,   and   Maine  were  all   demanding  in 
dependence   of  the  older  States  of  which   they   were   still 
legally  a  part.     In  all  ages  the  two  fruitful  causes  of  war 
between  neighboring  nations  have  been  disputes  over  trade 
and  over   boundaries ;    and   just   such   disputes   were  now 
threatening   to   turn   the   Atlantic   coast   into   a   stage   for 
petty  bloody  wars. 

The  third  great  evil  was  anarchy  inside  the  States.     The 
long  struggle  against  England's  control  led  some  intelligent 
patriots,  like  Samuel  Adams  and  Richard  Henry  Anarchy  in 
Lee,  to  object  to  any  real  control  over  the  new  individual 
States,   even   by    Congress;    and   it  made  many 
ignorant  men  hostile  to  any  government,  Central  or  State. 
For  years,  even  before  open  war,  they  had  associated  service 
to   liberty   with    anti-social    acts  —  boycotts,    breaking   up 
courts,  terrorizing  officers  of  the  law.     Many  of  them  had 
won  easy  reputation  as  patriots  by  refusing  to  pay  honest 
debts  due  in  England ;  and  they  now  felt  it  a  hardship  to 


266  THE  CRITICAL  PERIOD,   1783-1788 

pay  debts  to  their  neighbors.  Demagogues  declaimed,  to 
applauding  crowds,  that  all  debts  ought  to  be  wiped  out. 
Wild  theories  as  to  common  ownership  of  property  were  in 
the  air. 

A  rude  awakening  all  this  proved  to  the  patriots  who  had 
expected  a  golden  age.  "Good  God  !"  exclaimed  Washing 
ton,  of  such  disorders:  "Who  but  a  Tory  could  have  fore 
seen,  or  a  Briton  predicted,  them?"  And  again,  in  mo 
mentary  despair,  he  declared  that  such  commotions 
"exhibit  a  melancholy  proof  .  .  .  that  mankind,  when  left 
to  themselves,  are  unfit  for  their  own  government."  The 
worst  of  it  was,  too,  that  these  semi-criminal  forces  of 
lawlessness  and  confiscation  were  reinforced  by  the  bitter 
discontent  of  multitudes  of  well-meaning  men  who  were 
suffering  real  hardships.  Many  an  old  soldier  who  had 
lost  his  home  by  mortgage  foreclosure,  or  who  was  in  danger 
of  doing  so,  felt  that  the  loss  was  due  to  his  having  received 
insufficient  pay  in  worthless  paper  money,  while  the  law 
of  the  time  drained  his  slender  resources  by  extortionate 
court  fees,  and  threatened  to  condemn  him  to  hopeless 
imprisonment  for  such  undeserved  debt. 

The  most  widespread  manifestation  of  this  wild  spirit  was 

the  fiat  money  craze  that  swept  over  half  the  States  and 

threatened    all    the    others,    despite    the    recent 

Fiat  money  .  .  ' 

grievous  experience  with  such  currency.  In  New 
Hampshire  an  armed  mob  besieged  the  legislature  to  obtain 
such  relief.  The  Rhode  Island  experience  was  the  most  seri 
ous,  but  it  also  suggested  a  remedy.  Paper  money  was  the 
issue  in  that  State  in  the  election  of  the  legislature  in  1785. 
The  "cheap  money"  party  won.  Creditors  fled,  to  escape 
accepting  the  new  "legal  tender"  for  old  loans  of  good 
money,  and  storekeepers  closed  their  shops  rather  than 
sell  goods  for  the  worthless  stuff.  Then  the  legislature 
made  it  a  penal  offense,  punishable  without  jury  trial,  to  refuse 
the  paper  in  trade.  Finally  a  certain  W7eeden,  a  butcher, 
who  had  refused  to  sell  meat  for  paper  to  one  Trevett, 
was  brought  to  trial  (1786).  Weeden's  lawyer  pleaded 
that  the  law,  refusing  jury  trial,  was  in  conflict  with  the 


SHAYS'  REBELLION  267 

"constitution"  l  and  was  therefore  void.  The  court  took 
this  view  and  dismissed  the  case.  The  legislature  summoned 
the  judges  to  defend  themselves ;  and,  after  hearing  their 
defense,  voted  that  it  was  unsatisfactory.  At  the  next 
election,  three  of  the  four  judges  were  defeated ;  but  their 
action  had  helped  to  lay  the  foundation  for  the  tremendous 
power  of  the  later  American  courts. 

Most  important  of  all  the  anarchic  movements  was  Shays' 
Rebellion  in  Massachusetts.  For  six  months  in  1786-1787, 
parts  of  the  State  were  in  armed  insurrection  shays' 
against  the  regular  State  government.  Rioters  Rebellion 
broke  up  the  courts  in  three  large  districts,  to  stop  proceed 
ings  against  debtors.  And  Daniel  Shays,  a  Revolutionary 
captain,  with  nearly  two  thousand  men,  was  barely  repulsed 
from  the  Federal  arsenal  at  Springfield.  Says  Francis  A. 
Walker:  "The  insurgents  were  largely,  at  least  in  the  first 
instance,  sober,  decent,  industrious  men,  wrought  to  madness 
by  what  they  deemed  their  wrongs  ;  but  they  were,  of  course, 
joined  by  the  idle,  the  dissipated,  the  discontented,  the 
destructive  classes,  as  the  insurrection  grew." 

Congress  prepared  to  raise  troops  to  aid  Massachusetts, 
but,  fearing  to  avow  that  purpose,  pretended  to  be  preparing 
for  an  Indian  outbreak.  In  any  case,  Congress  was  too 
slow  to  help.  The  legislature  of  Massachusetts,  too, 
proved  timid.  But  Governor  Bowdoin  acted  with  decision. 
The  State  militia  were  called  out  (supported  by  contribu 
tions  from  Boston  capitalists),  and  the  rebels  were  dispersed 
in  a  sharp  midwinter  campaign.  A  few  months  later, 
however,  Bowdoin  was  defeated  for  reelection  by  John 
Hancock,  a  sympathizer  with  the  rebellion,  —  who  then 
pardoned  Shays  and  other  rebel  leaders. 

This  rebellion  was  one  of  the  chief  events  leading  to  the 
new  Federal  Constitution.  Men  could  look  calmly  at 
Rhode  Island  vagaries,  and  even  at  New  Hampshire  an 
archy;  but  riot  and  rebellion  in  the  staid,  powerful  Bay 

1  "Constitution"  was  used  here,  as  by  Otis  in  1761,  in  the  English  sense,  since 
the  Rhode  Island  charter  made  no  specific  reference  to  trial  by  jury.  This  makes 
the  decision  the  more  daring  and  remarkable. 


268  THE  CRITICAL  PERIOD,   1783-1788 

State  was  another  matter.  It  seemed  to  prophesy  the 
dissolution  of  society,  unless  there  could  be  formed  at  once 
a  central  government  strong  enough  "to  ensure  domestic 
tranquillity."  When  Henry  Lee  in  Congress  spoke  of  using 
influence  to  abate  the  rebellion,  Washington  wrote  him  in 
sharp  rebuke,  "You  talk,  my  good  Sir,  of  using  influence. 
.  .  .  Influence  is  no  government.  Let  us  have  one  [a 
government]  by  which  our  lives,  liberties,  and  properties 
may  be  secured,  or  let  us  know  the  worst." 

All  these  evils  of  the  Critical  Period  had  their  roots  in  the 
Articles  of  Confederation.  The  Confederation  called  itself 
Weaknesses  a  "firm  league  of  friendship."  Avowedly  it  fell 
of  the  far  short  of  a  national  union.  The  central 

authority  was  vested  in  a  Congress  of  delegates. 
These  delegates  were  appointed  annually  by  the  State 
legislatures,  and  were  paid  by  them.  Each  State  had  one 
vote  in  Congress,  and  nine  States  had  to  agree  for  im 
portant  measures.  Each  State  promised  to  the  citizens 
of  the  other  States  all  the  privileges  enjoyed  by  its  own 
citizens  (the  greatest  step  toward  real  unity  in  the  Arti 
cles)  ;  and  the  States  were  forbidden  to  enter  into  any 
treaty  with  foreign  powers  or  with  each  other,  or  to 
make  laws  or  impose  tariffs  that  should  conflict  with  any 
treaty  made  by  Congress.  Congress  was  to  have  sole 
control  over  all  foreign  relations ;  and,  for  internal  matters, 
it  was  to  manage  the  postal  service  and  regulate  weights 
and  measures  and  the  coinage.  The  final  article  read : 
"Every  State  shall  abide  by  the  determination  of  the  United 
States,  in  Congress  assembled,  on  all  questions  which  by 
this  Confederation  are  submitted  to  them.  And  the 
Articles  of  this  Confederation  shall  be  inviolably  observed  by 
every  State,  and  the  Union  shall  be  perpetual.  .  .  ."  But 
a  previous  article  provided,  "Each  State  retains  its  sov 
ereignty,  freedom,  and  independence,  and  every  power, 
jurisdiction,  and  right  which  is  not  by  this  Confederation 
expressly  delegated  to  the  United  States  in  Congress  assem 
bled." 

The  "Articles  of    Confederation"  was   not   a   crude  or 


THE  ARTICLES  OF  CONFEDERATION  269 

clumsy  document  of  its  kind.  Probably  it  was  the  best 
constitution  for  a  confederacy  of  states  that  the  world  had 
ever  seen.  Certainly  it  had  many  improvements  over  the 
ancient  Greek  confederations  and  over  the  Swiss  and  Dutch 
unions.  The  real  trouble  was,  no  mere  confederacy  could 
answer  the  needs  of  the  new  American  people.  That  people 
needed  a  national  government. 

The  four  great  weaknesses  of  the  Articles  had  proved  to 
be :  poor  machinery  of  government,  an  insufficient  enu 
meration  of  powers,  the  impossibility  of  amendment,  and 
the  fact  that  the  government  could  not  act  upon  individual 
citizens,  but  only  upon  States. 

1.  The  requirement  that  nine  States  in  Congress  must 
agree   for   important   business   hindered   action   unduly,  - 
especially  when  for  long  periods  not  more  than  Poor  ma_ 
nine  or  ten  States  were  represented.     Moreover  chinery  of 
the  union   had  no   executive   and   only   a  feeble  gov' 
germ  of  a  judiciary. 

2.  No  federal  government  had  ever  had  a  longer  list  of 
important  matters  committed  to  its  control,  but  the  list 
should  have  contained  at  least  two  more  powers : 

7  .  fji  Insufficient 

power  to  regulate  interstate  commerce  would  have  powers 
prevented    much    civil    strife ;     and   authority   to  enumer- 
levy   a   low   tariff  for   revenue   would   have   done 
away  with  the  chief  financial  difficulties. 

3.  After  all,  the  first  two  defects  were  matters  of  detail. 
They   might  have   been   remedied   without  giving  up   the 
fundamental  principle  of  the  union  as  a  league  of  Impossi_ 
sovereign  States.     And  the  States  would  have  cor-  baity  of 
rected  them,  in  part  at  least,  had  it  not  been  for  am< 

the  third  evil.  The  amending  clause  (in  the  Thirteenth 
Article)  demanded  the  unanimous  consent  of  the  thirteen 
State  legislatures  for  any  change  in  the  Articles.  In  prac 
tice,  this  prevented  any  amendment. 

In  February,  1781,  Congress  submitted  to  the  States  an  amend 
ment  which  would  have  added  to  its  powers  the  authority  to  put  a 


270  THE  CRITICAL  PERIOD,  1783-1788 

five  per  cent  tariff  on  imports,  —  the  proceeds  to  be  used  in  paying 
the  national  debt  and  the  interest  upon  it.  This  modest  request  for 
an  absolutely  indispensable  power  roused  intense  opposition. 
"If  taxes  can  thus  be  levied  by  any  power  outside  the  States," 
cried  misguided  patriots,  "why  did  we  oppose  the  tea  duties?" 
After  a  year's  discussion,  twelve  States  consented  ;  but  Rhode 
Island  voted  that  such  authority  in  Congress  would  "endanger  the 
liberties  of  the  States,"  and  the  amendment  failed. 

Another  attempt  was  made  at  once  (1783),  similar  to  the  former 
except  that  now  the  authority  was  to  be  granted  Congress  for 
only  twenty  -five  years.  Four  States  voted  No,  Virginia  among 
them;  and  said  Richard  Henry  Lee,  "If  such  an  amendment 
prevail,  Liberty  will  become  an  empty  name."  Congress  made 
these  States  a  solemn  appeal  not  to  ruin  the  only  means  of  redeem 
ing  the  sacred  faith  of  the  Union.  Three  of  them  yielded,  but  New 
York  (jealous  now  of  her  rapidly  growing  commerce)  maintained 
her  refusal;  and  the  amendment  again  failed  (1786),  after  three 
years  of  negotiation.  Far-seeing  men  then  gave  up  hope  of  efficient 
amendment  by  constitutional  means.  Revolution  (peaceable  or 
violent)  or  anarchy,  —  these  were  the  alternatives. 


4.    The  fourth  evil  (the  failure  to  act  upon  individuals) 
fundamental.     It  could  not  be  corrected  except  by  changing 

the  confederation  of  sovereign  States  into  some 
ment  by  kind  of  national  union.  For  three  millions  of 
suppiica-  weak  subjects  Congress  might  have  passed  laws. 

On  thirteen  powerful  subjects  it  could  merely 
make  requisitions.  John  Smith  or  Henry  Jones  would 
hardly  think  of  refusing  obedience  to  a  command  from  a 
Central  government;  but  New  York  or  Virginia  felt  as 
strong  as  Congress  itself,  and  would  do  as  they  pleased. 
A  confederation  of  states  is  necessarily  a  "government  by 
supplication." 

In  the  final  outcome  it  was  fortunate  that  constitutional 
amendment  was  impossible.  Otherwise,  reasonable  amend- 
Recognition  ment  might  have  patched  up  the  Articles  and 
of  the  evils  kep£  the  defective  union  alive.  But  no  ordinary 
amendment  could  have  cured  the  fundamental  evil.  The 
Constitutional  Convention  of  1787,  when  it  came,  perceived 


THE  ARTICLES  OF  CONFEDERATION  271 

the  need  clearly  and  met  it  courageously.  For  several  years, 
from  1781  to  1787,  thinkers  had  been  groping  towards  the 
idea  that  we  must  have  a  new  kind  of  federation,  such  that 
the  central  government  could  act  directly  upon  individual 
citizens ;  and  in  that  final  year  Hamilton  wrote :  - 

"The  evils  we  experience  do  not  proceed  from  minute  or  partial 
imperfections,  but  from  fundamental  errors  in  the  structure,  which 
cannot  be  amended  otherwise  than  by  an  alteration  in  the  first 
principles  and  main  pillars  of  the  fabric.  The  great  radical  vice 
of  the  existing  confederacy  is  the  principle  of  LEGISLATION  for 
STATES  in  their  corporate  or  collective  capacity,  as  contradis 
tinguished  from  the  INDIVIDUALS  of  which  they  consist." 
Federalist,  XI.  (The  variety  of  type  was  used  by  Hamilton.) 

This  fundamental  defect  had  been  found  in  every  federal 
union   in   earlier  history.     All   had   been   confederations  of 
states.     The  American  Constitution  of   1787  was  A  federal 
to  give  to  the  world  a  new  type  of  government,  state  or  a 

.    7        7  T        ,1  ii  ,1  confedera- 

-  a  jederal   state.     In   the   old   type   the  states  tion  of 
remained   sovereign  states  confederated.     In  the  states 
new  type   they   are  fused,  for  certain   purposes,   into  one 
sovereign  unit.     This  new  kind  of  federal  government,  said 
the  shrewd  and  philosophical  Tocqueville  forty  years  later, 
was    "a    great    discovery    in    political    science/'     It    was 
adopted    by    Switzerland    in    1848,    by    the   Dominion    of 
Canada    in    1867,    by   the    German    Empire    in    1871,   by 
Australia  in  1900,  and  by  South  Africa  in  1909. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE    FEDERAL    CONVENTION   AND    THE    CONSTITUTION 

WHEN  the  second   revenue   amendment   failed,    in    1786 
(page  270),  a  "Continental  convention"  had  already  been 
called  to  consider  more  radical  changes. 

Suggestions  „  , .  -    * 

for  change          Suggestions  for  a  convention  to  jorm  a  stronger 
in  govern-      government  had  been  made  from  time  to  time  by 
individuals  for  several   years.     As  early  as  1776 
Thomas  Paine  had  urged  :  - 

"Nothing  but  a  continental  form  of  government  can  keep  the 
peace  of  the  continent.  .  .  .  Let  a  continental  conference  be  held 
to  frame  a  continental  charter.  .  .  .  Our  strength  and  happiness 
are  continental,  not  provincial.  We  have  every  opportunity  and 
every  encouragement  to  form  the  noblest  and  purest  constitution 
on  the  face  of  the  earth." 

Twice  Hamilton  had  secured  from  the  New  York  legislature 
a  resolution  favoring  such  a  convention.  No  concrete 
result  followed,  however,  until  these  proposals  became 
connected  with  a  commercial  undertaking. 

Washington  had  long  been  interested  in  Western  lands, 
and  at  the  close  of  the  Revolution  he  owned  some  thirty 
The  Mount  thousand  acres  m  the  Virginia  Military  Reserve 
Vemon  (page  251).  A  visit  to  the  West  impressed  him 
meeting,  powerfully  with  the  need  of  better  communica 
tion  with  that  region,  both  for  business  pros 
perity  and  for  continued  political  union ; l  and  he  urged 
Virginia  to  build  roads  to  her  WTestern  possessions.  In 
pursuance  of  this  idea  he  became  president  of  a  company 

1  Referring  to  the  danger  that  the  Westerners  might  join  Spain,  he  wrote : 
"They  .  .  .  stand,  as  it  were,  upon  a  pivot.  The  touch  of  a  feather  would  turn 
them  either  way." 

272 


PRELIMINARY  ATTEMPTS  273 

to  improve  the  navigation  of  the  Potomac.  This  matter 
required  assent  from  both  Virginia  and  Maryland.  These 
States  were  also  in  dispute  over  the  tariffs  at  the  mouth 
of  Chesapeake  Bay.  At  Washington's  invitation,  commis 
sioners  from  the  two  States  met  at  Mount  Vernon,  to  discuss 
these  matters.  There  it  was  decided  to  hold  another  meet 
ing  to  which  Pennsylvania  also  should  be  invited,  as  she, 
too,  was  interested  in  Chesapeake  Bay.  Washington 
had  suggested  that  the  proposed  meeting,  since  it  concerned 
improvement  in  the  mean#-of.  commerce,  should  consider  also 
the  possibility  of  uniform  duties  on  that  commerce.  Mary 
land  expressed  approval,  and  asked  whether  it  might  not  be 
well  to  invite  other  States  to  the  proposed  conference ;  and 
Virginia  finally  issued  an  invitation  to  all  the  States  to  send 
representatives  to  Annapolis,  September  1,  1786. 

Only  five  States  appeared  at  this  Annapolis  Convention. 
Even  Maryland  failed  to  choose  delegates.  But  New 
Jersey  had  instructed  her  representatives  to  try 

.£  f   .•         i  i  JT         The  failure 

to  secure,  not  only  uniform  duties,  but  also  other  Of  the 
measures  which  might  render  the  Confederation  ade-  Annapolis 
quate  to  the  needs  of  the  times.     This  thought  was 
made  the  basis  of  a  new  call.      The  delegates  at  Annapolis 
adopted  an  address,  drawn  by  Alexander  Hamilton,  urging 
all  the  States  to  send  commissioners   to  Philadelphia  the 
following  May,  - 

"to  devise  such  further  provisions  as  shall  appear  to  them  necessary 
to  render  the  constitution  of  the  federal  government  adequate 
to  the  exigencies  of  the  Union,"  and  to  report  to  Congress  such 
an  act  "as  when  agreed  to  by  them  [Congress],  and  confirmed  by 
the  legislatures  of  every  State,  will  effectually  provide  for  "  those 
exigencies. 

At  first  this  call  attracted  little  attention.  But  the 
sudden  increase  of  anarchy  in  the  fall  of  1786  brought  men 
to  recognize  the  need  for  immediate  action.  Here  was  the 
opportunity.  Madison  persuaded  the  Virginia  legislature 
to  appoint  delegates  and  to  head  the  list  with  the  name 
of  Washington.  Even  in  Virginia  there  had  been  warm 


274  THE  PHILADELPHIA  CONVENTION,  1787 

opposition  to  a  convention.  Patrick  Henry  refused  to 
attend,  and  the  young  Monroe  called  the  meeting  unwise. 
Washington  thought  of  declining  his  appointment,  net 
because  the  meeting  was  not  needed,  but  because  he  ex 
pected  it  to  turn  out  a  fizzle  and  questioned  whether  at 
tendance  would  be  consonant  with  his  dignity.  Not  until 
late  in  March  did  he  agree  to  go,  after  three  months  of 
hesitation.  Meantime  other  States  had  followed  Virginia's 
lead,  and  the  Philadelphia  Convention  became  a  fact. 

That  famous  Convention  lasted  four  months  —  from 
May  25,  1787,  to  September  17.  The  debates  were  guarded 
ThePhiia-  ^y  the  most  solemn  pledges  of  secrecy.  Most 
deiphia  that  we  know  about  them  comes  from  Madison's 
ManyVtoti0n'  notes.  Madison  had  been  disappointed  in  the 
September,  meager  information  regarding  the  establishment 
of  earlier  confederacies,  and  he  believed  that 
upon  the  success  of  the  federation  now  to  be  formed  "would 
be  staked  .  .  .  possibly  the  cause  of  liberty  throughout 
the  world."  Accordingly,  he  determined  to  preserve  full 
records  of  its  genesis.  Missing  no  session,  he  kept  careful 
notes  of  each  day's  proceedings  and  of  each  speaker's 
arguments ;  and  each  evening  he  wrote  up  these  notes  more 
fully,  submitting  them  sometimes  to  the  speakers  for  cor 
rection.  In  1837,  when  every  member  of  the  Convention 
had  passed  away,  Congress  bought  this  manuscript  from 
Madison's  Mrs.  Madison,  and  published  it  as  "Madison's 
Journal  Journal  of  the  Constitutional  Convention."  A  few 
other  members  took  imperfect  notes  and  several  wrote 
letters  that  throw  light  upon  the  attitude  of  certain  men. 

Fifty -five  men  sat  in  the  Convention.  Seventy-three 
delegates  were  appointed,  but  eighteen  failed  to  appear. 
Composition  Twenty-nine  of  the  fifty-five  had  benefited  by 
and  leaders  college  life ;  but  among  those  who  had  missed  that 
training  were  Franklin  and  Washington.  With  few  excep 
tions  the  members  were  young  men,  several  of  the  most 
active  being  under  thirty.  The  entire  body  was  English 
by  descent  and  traditions.  Three  notable  members  — 
Alexander  Hamilton  of  New  York,  and  James  Wilson  and 


THE  MEN 


275 


Robert  Morris  of  Pennsylvania  —  had  been  born  English 
subjects  outside  the  United  States ;  and  the  great  South 
Carolina  delegates,  Rutledge  and  the  Pinckneys,  had  been 
educated  in  England. 

Virginia  and  New  Jersey  were  to  give  their  names  to  the 
two  schemes  that  contended  for  mastery  in  the  Convention ; 
and  their  delegations, 
therefore,  are  of  special 
interest.  Virginia  sent 
seven  members.  Among 
them  were  Washing 
ton,  George  Mason  (who 
eleven  years  before  had 
drawn  the  first  State 
constitution) ,  Edmund 
Randolph,  her  brilliant 
young  governor,  and 
Madison,  who  was  to 
earn  the  title  "Father 
of  the  Constitution." 
New  Jersey  sent  four 
delegates,  all  tried 
statesmen :  Livingstone, 
eleven  times  her  gov 
ernor,  Patterson,  ten 
times  her  Attorney- 
General,  Br  early,  her 
great  Chief  Justice,  and 
Houston,  many  times  her 
Congressman.  These 
delegations  were  typi 
cal.  "Hardly  a  man  in  the  Convention,"  says  McMaster, 
"but  had  sat  in  some  famous  assembly,  had  filled  some 
high  place,  or  had  made  himself  conspicuous  for  learn 
ing,  for  scholarship,  or  for  signal  service  rendered  in  the 
cause  of  liberty." 

On  the  other  hand,  William  Pierce  of  Georgia,  who  sat  in 
the  Convention,  in  his  entertaining  character  sketches  of  his 


GEORGE  WASHINGTON.  From  the  Stuart  por 
trait.  Washington  was  president  of  the 
Convention  and  exercised  great  influence 
there,  though  he  made  no  formal  speech  in 
its  sessions.  He  was  to  live  thirteen  years 
after  that  meeting.  This  most  famous  of 
his  portraits  belongs  to  the  later  period  of 
his  life.  Says  John  Fiske,  very  happily, 
Washington  was  a  typical  English  gentle 
man,  reared  on  the  right  side  of  the  Atlantic. 


276  THE  PHILADELPHIA  CONVENTION,  1787 

associates  there,  has  nothing  to  say  of  several  except  that 
they  were  gentlemen  "  of  Family  and  fortune."  Certainly 
Fear  of  this  illustrious  company  felt  a  deep  distrust  of  de- 
democracy  mocracy.  In  their  political  thought,  they  were 
much  closer  to  John  Winthrop  than  to  Abraham  Lincoln. 
They  wished  a  government  for  the  people,  but  by  what  they 
were  fond  of  calling  "the  wealth  and  intelligence  of  the 
country."  At  best,  they  were  willing  only  so  far  to  divide 
power  between  "the  few"  and  "the  many"  as  to  keep  each 
class  from  oppressing  the  other,  —  and  they  felt  particular 
tenderness  for  "the  few."  The  same  causes  that  made  them 
desire  a  stronger  government  made  them  wish  also  a  more 
aristocratic  government.  It  seemed  an  axiom  to  them  that 
the  unhappy  conditions  of  their  country  were  due  (as  Gerry 1 
phrased  it)  to  "an  excess  of  democracy." 

Necessarily  the  men  of  the  Convention  belonged  to  the 
eighteenth  century,  not  the  twentieth.  But,  more  than 
that,  they  represented  the  crest  of  a  reactionary  movement 
of  their  own  day.  In  the  early  Revolutionary  years,  the 
leaders  had  been  forced  to  throw  themselves  into  the  arms 
of  democracy  for  protection  against  England  (page  186), 
and  those  years  had  been  marked  by  a  burst  of  noble  en 
thusiasm  for  popular  government.  But,  when  the  struggle 
was  over,  the  "leaders  of  society"  began  to  look  coldly 
upon  further  partnership  with  distasteful  allies  no  longer 
needed ;  and  this  inevitable  tendency  was  magnified  by 
the  unhappy  turbulence  of  the  times.  By  1785,  especially 
among  the  professional  and  commercial  classes,  a  con 
servative  reaction  had  set  in ;  and  this  expressed  itself 
emphatically  in  the  Philadelphia  Convention.  Says  Wood- 
row  Wilson  (Division  and  Reunion,  12):-  "The  Federal 
government  was  not  by  intention  a  democratic  government. 
In  plan  and  in  structure  it  had  been  meant  to  check  the  sweep 
and  power  of  popular  majorities.  .  .  .  [It]  had  in  fact  been 
originated  and  organized  upon  the  initiative,  and  primarily 
in  the  interest,  of  the  mercantile  and  wealthy  classes." 

1  Elbridge  Gerry  was  one  of  the  four  delegates  from  Massachusetts,  perhaps 
the  most  democratic  of  them,  and,  some  years  later,  a  real  democratic  leader. 


DISTRUST  OF  DEMOCRACY  277 

May  31,  the  second  day  of  debate,  Gerry  declared  that  he 
"abhorred"  pure  democracy  as  "the  worst  of  all  political 
evils."  1  The  same  day,  Roger  Sherman  of  G^ 
Connecticut  objected  to  the  popular  election  of  Randolph, 
the  members  even  of  the  lower  House  of  Congress,  J*d 
because  "the  people,  immediately,  should  have  as 
little  to  do  as  may  be  about  the  government"',  and  Ran 
dolph  explained  that  the  Senate,  in  the  Virginia  plan, 
was  designed  as  "a  check  against  this  tendency"  [democ 
racy].  In  tracing  to  £KeiF~origin  the  evils  under  which 
the  country  labored,  "every  man,"  he  affirmed,  "had  found 
[that  origin]  in  the  turbulence  and  follies  of  democracy  " 
Two  days  later,  Dickinson  declared  "a  limited  monarchy 
.  .  .  one  of  the  best  governments  in  the  world.  It  was  not 
certain  that  equal  blessings  were  derivable  from  any  other 
form.  ...  A  limited  monarchy,  however,  was  out  of  the 
question.  The  spirit  of  the  times  forbade  the  experiment.  .  .  . 
But  though  a  form  the  most  perfect  perhaps  in  itself  be  un 
attainable,  we  must  not  despair"',  and  he  proceeded  to  sug 
gest  ways  to  make  property  count  in  the  new  government. 
June  6,  he  returned  to  this  theme,  urging  that  the  Senate 
should  be  "carried  through  such  a  refining  process  [viz.,  in 
direct  elections  and  property  qualifications]  as  will  assimi 
late  it,  as  nearly  as  may  be,  to  the  House  of  Lords  in 
England." 

Gouverneur  Morris  of  Pennsylvania,  one  of  the  most 
brilliant  and  effective  men  in  the  Convention,  also  believed 
it  essential  that  the  Senate  should  be  "an  aristo-  Morris  and 
cratic  body,"  composed  of  rich  men  holding  office  Hamilton 
for  life.  Said  he,  "It  must  have  great  personal  property; 
it  must  have  the  aristocratic  spirit;  it  must  love  to  lord 
it  through  pride."  Morris,  Rufus  King  of  Massachusetts, 
and  Rutledge  strove  strenuously  to  have  wealth  repre 
sented  in  the  lower  House  also,  affirming,  each  of  them, 
that  "property  is  the  main  object  of  government";  nor 
did  this  claim,  so  un-American  to  our  ears,  call  forth  one 

1  The  quotations  in  this  chapter  come  from  Madison's  Journal,  unless  otherwise 
indicated. 


278 


THE  PHILADELPHIA  CONVENTION,  1787 


protest  that  government  should  concern  itself  as  much 
with  human  rights  as  with  property  rights.  Hamilton 
held,  perhaps,  the  most  extreme  ground  against  democ 
racy.  He  "acknowledged  himself  not  to  think  favorably 

of  republican  govern 
ment.  .  .  .  He  was  sen 
sible  at  the  same  time 
that  it  would  be  unwise 
[for  the  convention]  to 
propose  one  of  any  other 
form.  But  in  his  pri 
vate  opinion,  he  had  no 
scruple  in  declaring, 
supported  as  he  was  by 
the  opinion  of  so  many 
of  the  good  and  wise, 
that  the  British  govern 
ment  was  the  best  in  the 
world,  and  he  doubted 
much  whether  anything 
short  of  it  would  do  in 
America."  It  was  "the 
model  to  which  we 

BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN.     From  the  portrait  by      should     approach     as 

Duplessis    during    Franklin's    residence    in  ,  M  i      »     o^u 

France.  At  the  time  of  the  Convention,  nearly  aspOSSlble.  Lhe 
Franklin  was  82.  William  Pierce  (see  page 
275)  calls  him  "the  greatest  phylosopher  of 
the  age ;  the  very  heavens  obey  him,  and 
the  clouds  yield  up  their  lightning  to  be  im 
prisoned  in  his  rod.  But  ...  he  is  no 
speaker,  nor  does  he  seem  to  let  politics  engage 
his  attention.  He  .  .  .  tells  a  story  in  a  style 
more  engaging  than  anything  I  ever  heard." 


House  of  Lords  he  styled 
"a  most  noble  institu 
tion,"  especially  com 
mending  it  as  "a  per 
manent  barrier  against 


every  pernicious  innova 
tion."  Hamilton  then  presented  a  detailed  plan,  which,  he 
Hamilton's  said,  represented  his  own  views  of  what  was  de- 
"pian"  sirable  in  America:  an  Executive  for  life,  with 
extreme  monarchic  powers  (including  an  absolute  veto),  chosen 
by  indirect  election;  a  Senate  for  life,  chosen  by  indirect 
election;  and  a  representative  assembly  chosen  by  free 
holders;  this  government  was  to  appoint  the  governors 


CONFLICTING  INTERESTS  279 

of  the  States,  and,  through  them,  to  exercise  an  absolute 
veto  upon  all  State  legislation. 

Such    statements   went    almost    unchallenged.     Dissent,    if 
expressed  at  all,  cloaked  itself  in  apologetic  phrase.     This 
was  due  to  the  unfortunate  absence  of  a  group 
of  splendid  figures  whom  we  might  have  expected  the  demo- 
to  see  in  that  gathering.     Great  as  the  Virginia  cratic 
delegation    was,    it    might    have    been    greater 
still,   had   it   included   Thomas   Jefferson,   Patrick   Henry, 
Richard    Henry    Lee,    or    Thomas    Paine;     and    it    would 
no  doubt  have  been  well  had  Massachusetts  sent  Samuel 
Adams,    or    New    York    her    great    war-governor,    George 
Clinton.     Four  or  five  of  these  democratic  leaders  would 
have  given  a  different  tone  to  the  debates.     As  things  were, 
every   prominent   patriot   of   Revolutionary   fame,    on   the 
conservative    side,    was    present,    except   John    Adams    and 
John    Jay ;    but  the   lonely    representatives  of    democracy 
were  George  Mason  and  the  aged  and  gentle  Franklin  - 
just  returned  from  many  years  of  residence  at  the  aristo 
cratic  French  court.     And  even  Mason  "admitted  that  we 
had  been  too  democratic,"  though  he  was  fearful  the  Con 
vention  was  going  to  the  other  extreme. 

The  Convention  had  many  conflicting  interests.  It  con 
tained  Nationalists  and  State-sovereignty  men,  "North 
erners "  and  "Southerners,"  commercial  interests  "parties» 
and  agricultural  interests,  advocates  of  extending  in  the 
slavery  and  friends  of  restricting  slavery.  These  Conven 
various  lines  were  so  intertangled  as  to  prevent  definite 
"parties."  It  is  convenient  to  speak  of  a  "large-State 
party"  and  "a  small-State  pa'rty";  but  the  men  who 
divided  in  this  particular  way  on  one  great  question  found 
themselves  in  quite  different  combinations  on  almost  every 
other  problem.  No  praise  is  too  high  for  the  patience 
and  "sweet  reasonableness"  (failing  only  with  a  few  in 
dividuals  and  on  rare  occasions)  with  which  on  all 
these  matters  the  great  statesmen  of  that  memorable 
assembly  strove  first  to  convince  one  another,  and,  failing 
that,  to  find  a  rational  compromise. 


280  THE  PHILADELPHIA  CONVENTION,  1787 

High  praise,  too,  is  due  their  profound  aversion  to  mere 
theory,  their  instinctive  preference  for  that  which  had  been 
Aversion  to  proven  good.  Mr.  Gladstone  once  said:  "As  the 
mere  theory  British  constitution  is  the  most  subtle  organism 
which  has  proceeded  from  progressive  history,  so  the  American 
constitution  is  the  most  wonderful  work  ever  struck  off  at  a 
given  moment  by  the  hand  and  purpose  of  man."  This  sen 
tence  has  helped  to  spread  the  idea  that  the  Philadelphia 
Convention  invented  a  whole  set  of  new  institutions.  Such 
an  impression  is  mistaken.  Practically  every  piece  of  political 
machinery  in  the  Constitution  was  taken  from  the  familiar 
workings  of  State  constitutions. 

Some  months  before  the  meeting,  Madison  had  drawn  up 
several  propositions  concerning  a  new  government,  in  letters 
The  Virginia  to  Jefferson  and  Washington.  The  Virginia  dele- 
Plan  gates  were  the  first  to  arrive  at  Philadelphia. 

While  they  waited  for  others,  they  caucused  daily,  formu 
lating  these  suggestions  of  Madison's  into  the  Virginia  Plan. 
This  plan  provided  for  a  two-House  legislature.  The  lower 
House  was  to  be  chosen  by  the  people  and  was  to  be  appor 
tioned  among  the  States  in  proportion  to  population  or  wealth 
(so  that  Virginia,  Pennsylvania,  and  Massachusetts  each 
would  have  sixteen  or  seventeen  delegates  to  one  from  Dela 
ware  or  Rhode  Island) .  The  upper  House  was  to  be  chosen 
by  the  lower.  There  was  no  provision  for  equality  of  the  States 
in  either  branch  of  the  legislature,  and  no  security  that  a 
small  State  would  have  any  part  at  all  in  the  upper  House. 
As  to  power,  the  central  legislature  was  to  fix  its  own  limits. 
And  it  was  to  have  an  absolute  veto  upon  any  State  legislation 
which  it  thought  inconsistent  with  its  own  laws.  This 
would  have  left  the  States  hardly  more  than  convenient 
administrative  districts,  and  would  have  created  a  govern 
ment  more  like  that  of  modern  France  than  like  that  of  the 
present  United  States.  It  did  not  so  much  propose  to  amend 
the  Confederation  as  to  substitute  a  consolidated  government. 

May  29,  the  Virginia  Plan  was  presented  to  the  Con 
vention  by  Randolph  in  a  brilliant  speech,  and  for  two 


VIRGINIA  AND  NEW  JERSEY  PLANS  281 

weeks,  in  committee  of  the  whole,  it  was  debated,  clause  by 
clause.  Then  came  an  interruption.  So  far,  the  large  States 
had  had  things  their  own  way ;  but  at  last  the  The  New 
small-State  delegates  had  united  upon  the  New  Jersey  Plan 
Jersey  Plan,  which  was  now  presented  by  Patterson.  This 
plan  would  merely  have  amended  the  old  Confederation  in 
some  particulars.  It  would  have  given  Congress  power  to 
impose  tariffs  and  to  use  force  against  a  delinquent  State ; 
and  it  designed  a  true  executive  and  an  imposing  federal 
judiciary. 

The  committee  of  the  whole  gave  another  week  to  com 
paring  the  two  plans.     Then,  by  a  decisive  vote,  it  set  aside 
the  new  proposals  and  returned  to  the  Virginia  stages  in 
Plan.     From  June  19  to  July  26,  nineteen  resolu-  the  work 
tions,  based  on  that  plan  and  adopted  in  Committee,  were 
considered  again,  in  formal  Convention,  clause  by  clause. 
Midway  in  this  period  came  the  great  crisis,  when  day  by 
day  the  Convention  tottered  on  the  brink  of  disruption  in  the 
contest  between  large  and  small  States.     That  calamity  was 
finally  averted  by  the  Connecticut  Compromise  (page  283). 

The  Convention  then  adjourned  for  eleven  days,  while 
the  conclusions  so  far  agreed  upon  were  put  into  the  form 
of  a  constitution,  in  Articles  and  Sections,  by  a  Committee 
of  Detail.     From  August  6  to  September  10  this  draft  of  a 
constitution  was  again  considered,  section  by  section.     Next, 
a  Committee  of  Revision  (often  referred  to  as  the  The  Com_ 
"Committee  on  Style")   redrafted  the  Constitu-  mittee  on 
tion  according   to  the  latest   conclusions    of  the     tye 
Convention.     To  Gouverneur  Morris,  chairman  of  this  com 
mittee,  we  owe  in  large  degree  the  admirable  arrangement 
and  clear  wording  of  the  document.     Once  more  the  Con 
vention  reviewed  its   work  in  this  new  form   (September 
12-17).     This  time  few  changes  were  made  ;    and  September 
17  the  Constitution  was  signed  by  thirty-nine   delegates, 
representing  twelve  States. 

Thirteen  of  the  fifty -five  delegates  had  left ;   and  three  of 
those  present   (Randolph,   Mason,   and   Gerry)   refused  to 


MAKING  THE  CONSTITUTION 

sign.  Randolph  afterwards  urged  ratification  in  Virginia, 
but  Mason  and  Gerry  remained  earnest  opponents  of  rati 
fication.  In  July  Mason  had  said  that  it  could  not  be  more 
inconvenient  for  any  gentleman  to  remain  absent  from  his 
private  affairs  than  it  was  for  him ;  but  he  would  "bury  his 
bones  in  this  city  rather  than  expose  his  country  to  the  con 
sequences  of  a  dissolution  without  anything  being  done." 
On  August  31,  however,  he  exclaimed  that  he  "would  sooner 
chop  off  his  right  hand  than  put  it  to  the  Constitution  as  it 
now  stands." 

Early  in  the  debates,  the  Connecticut  delegates  (Roger 
Sherman,  Oliver  Ellsworth,  and  William  Johnson}  had  pro- 
The  Con-  posed  a  compromise  between  the  Virginia  and  the 
necticut  New  Jersey  plans ;  i.e.  that  the  lower  House  of 
5  the  legislature  should  represent  the  people,  and 
that  the  upper  House  should  represent  States,  each  State 
having  there  an  equal  vote.  When  feeling  ran  highest  be 
tween  the  large-State  and  small-State  parties,  this  proposal 
was  renewed  with  effect. 

Debate  had  grown  violent.  The  small-State  delegates 
served  notice  that  they  would  not  submit  to  the  Virginia 
Plan.  A  large-State  delegate  threatened  that  if  not  per 
suasion,  then  the  sword,  should  unite  the  States.  Small- 
State  men  retorted  bitterly  that  they  would  seek  European 
protection,  if  needful,  against  such  coercion. 

Each  State  had  one  vote.  Virginia,  Pennsylvania,  and 
Massachusetts  were  the  true  "large  States";  but  with 
them,  on  this  issue,  were  ranged  North  Carolina,  South 
Carolina,  and  Georgia.  New  Jersey,  New  York,1  Dela 
ware,  Maryland,  and  Connecticut  comprised  the  "small- 

1  New  York  was  then  little  more  than  the  valley  of  the  Hudson.  Hamilton, 
delegate  from  that  State,  was  an  extreme  centralizer ;  but  he  was  outvoted  always 
by  his  two  colleagues.  In  the  height  of  this  debate,  those  gentlemen  seceded  from 
the  Convention.  After  that,  New  York  had  no  vote,  since  the  legislature  had 
provided  that  the  State  should  not  be  represented  by  less  than  two  of  the  three 
delegates.  For  this  reason,  Hamilton  had  little  influence  upon  the  work  of  the 
Convention. 


THE  CONNECTICUT  COMPROMISE  283 

State  party."  Rhode  Island  never  appointed  delegates, 
and  the  New  Hampshire  representatives  were  not  on 
the  ground  until  July  23.  Had  these  two  States  taken 
part,  the  "small  States"  would  have  controlled  the 
Convention  from  the  first. 

The  critical  vote  came  July  2,  after  a  week's  strenuous 
debate.  The  first  ten  States  to  vote  stood  five  to  five. 
If  either  party  won,  the  other  was  likely  to  organize  a 
separate  convention.  Georgia  was  still  to  vote ;  and  one  of 
her  two  delegates  voted  on  the  small-State  side  (against  his 
own  convictions),  so  as  to  throw  away  the  vote  of  his  State 
and  leave  the  result  a  tie. 

This  gave  time  for  reflection.  Said  Roger  Sherman,  "We 
are  now  at  full  stop,  and  nobody  [he  supposed]  meant  that 
we  should  break  up  without  doing  something."  In  the 
desultory  discussion  that  followed,  several  members  sug 
gested  a  committee  to  devise  some  compromise.  Finally, 
the  matter  was  referred  to  a  Committee  of  Eleven,  one  from 
each  State  present.  The  moderate  men  won  their  victory  in 
selecting  the  members  of  this  committee.  The  most  un 
compromising  men  in  this  dispute  had  been  the  great  leaders 
from  Virginia,  Pennsylvania,  and  Massachusetts,  —  Madison 
and  Randolph,  Wilson  and  Gouverneur  Morris,  and  Rufus 
King.  Desperate  as  the  case  stood,  Madison  and  Wilson 
spoke  against  referring  the  question  to  a  committee  at  all. 
Properly  enough,  these  men  were  all  left  off  the  committee, 
the  places  from  their  States  being  filled  by  those  of  their  col 
leagues  most  in  sympathy  with  small-State  views,  —  Mason, 
Franklin,  and  Gerry. 

July  5,  the  committee  reported  once  more  the  Connecticut 
Compromise.  Large-State  leaders  were  still  opposed  ;  but, 
after  ten  days  more  of  debate,  the  plan  carried.  This  "First 
Great  Compromise  of  the  Constitution"  has  made  our 
government  partly  national,  partly  federal.  Each  citizen 
of  the  United  States  is  subject,  directly,  to  two  distinct 
authorities,  —  the  National  government  and  a  State  govern 
ment.  The  National  government  acts  directly  upon  him, 


284  MAKING  THE  CONSTITUTION 

but  only  within  a  prescribed  field.  Elsewhere  the  State 
retains  complete  authority,  —  as  supreme  within  its  domain 
as  the  Central  government  in  its.  Neither  government  has 
any  right  to  trespass  on  the  field  of  the  other. 

The  Constitution  tried  to  mark  off  the  two  fields  from  one 
another  by  three  devices  :  (1)  by  "enumerating,"  in  eighteen 
paragraphs,  the  powers  given  to  Congress  ;  (2)  by  forbidding 
certain  powers  to  the  States;  and  (3)  by  providing  (ex 
pressly  in  the  tenth  amendment,  and  by  implication  through 
out)  that  powers  not  granted  to  the  Central  government 
are  reserved  to  the  States.  It  is  customary,  therefore,  to 
call  our  government  "a  government  of  enumerated  powers." 

The  enumerated  powers  are  vast.  They  include  sole 
control  over  foreign  relations  (with  the  making  of  peace 
The  "enu-  an<^  war,  and  maintaining  armies  and  navies) ; 
merated  and,  in  domestic  matters,  the  control  of  naturaliza 
tion,  coinage,  and  weights  and  measures,  the  post 
office  and  postal  service,  copyrights  and  patents,  commerce 
between  citizens  living  in  different  States,  and  taxation  so 
far  as  needful  to  enable  the  government  to  care  for  all  these 
duties. 

Still,  these  powers  touch  our  daily  life  less  closely  and  less 
vitally  than  do  the  powers  reserved  to  the  States.  The  State 
regulates  the  franchise  (indirectly,  even  the  Federal  fran 
chise  !),  marriage  and  divorce  and  all  family  relations,  in 
heritance,  education,  all  property  and  industrial  conditions 
(except  those  that  may  be  connected  with  interstate  com 
merce),  and  all  criminal  law,  as  well  as  the  powers  of  towns, 
counties,  and  other  local  units. 

In  a  federal  government  there  is  inevitably  a  constant 
contest  between  the  advocates  of  stronger  central  control 
and  the  upholders  of  the  rights  of  the  States.  In  power, 
either  party  is  apt  to  seek  to  extend  the  province  of  the 
government.  In  opposition,  the  same  party  appeals  to 
States  rights,  to  restrict  a  power  which  seems  dangerous 
in  the  hands  of  opponents.  The  party  anxious  to  limit  the 

1  Except  as  certain  provisions  have  been  put  beyond  the  control  of  either  State 
or  Congress  by  the  Fifteenth  and  Nineteenth  amendments. 


IMPLIED  POWERS  285 

Central  government  has  always  sought  to  restrict  it  closely 
to  the  "Enumerated  powers."  Its  opponents  have  met  this 
war  cry  with  the  shibboleth,  "Implied  powers"  implied 
Under  cover  of  this  phrase  a  vast  development  of  P°wers 
National  power  has  taken  place.  Thus  the  Constitution  gave 
Congress  power  to  regulate  interstate  commerce.  To  the 
men  of  that  day,  that  power  meant  only  authority  to  prevent 
one  State  from  setting  up  barriers  against  another's  com 
merce.  Under  the  same  phrase  to-day  Congress  regulates 
railroad  freight  rates  on  commerce,  adulteration  of  foods 
(character  of  goods  carried  in  this  commerce),  and  com 
pensation  by  railroad  companies  for  injuries  to  employees. 
This  expansion  of  National  authority  is  essential  to  our 
well-being.  The  States  are  no  longer  competent  to  manage 
these  common  interests.  Steam  and  electricity,  and  inti 
mate  trade  relations,  make  many  matters  fit  subjects  for 
National  control  now  which  were  better  off  in  the  hands  of 
the  States  a  hundred  years  ago.  It  would  be  better,  no 
doubt,  to  give  such  powers  distinctly  to  the  Central  govern 
ment  by  adding  them  to  the  enumeration  of  powers ;  but 
our  Constitution  makes  such  amendment  exceedingly 
difficult,  and  so  it  is  fortunate  that  we  can  meet  new  needs 
as  they  arise  by  even  this  dangerous  process  of  "forced 
construction"  at  the  hands  of  Congress  and  the  Supreme 
Court.  Says  James  Bryce,  - 

"They  [the  men  of  the  Philadelphia  Convention]  foresaw  that 
their  work  would  need  to  be  elucidated  by  judicial  commentary ; 
but  they  were  far  from  conjecturing  the  enormous  strain  to  which 
some  of  their  expressions  would  be  subjected  in  the  effort  to  apply 
them  to  new  facts.  .  .  .  The  Americans  have  more  than  once 
bent  their  constitution,  that  they  might  not  be  forced  to  break  it." 

In  expanding  "implied  powers,"  two  expressions  in  the 
Constitution  have  been  especially  appealed  to,  —  the  "gen 
eral  welfare"  clause,  and  the  "necessary  and  proper"  clause. 

1.  The  words  "to  provide  for  the  general  welfare " "occur 
twice,  —  once  in  the  preamble,  *once  in  the  first  paragraph  of 
the  enumeration  of  powers.  In  the  preamble  the  clause 


286  MAKING  THE  CONSTITUTION 

could  not  convey  power ;  and,  moreover,  in  that  connection, 
the  words  are  taken  from  a  similar  passage  in  the  old  Articles 

of  Confederation.  In  the  other  passage  (Art.  I, 
"  General  sec.  8), paragraphing  and  punctuation  show  beyond 
Welfare  "  reasonable  dispute  —  as  does  also  the  history  of 

the  clause  in  the  Convention  —  that  "to  .  .  . 
provide  for  the  general  welfare"  is  not  an  independent  grant 
of  power,  coordinate  with  "to  lay  taxes,"  or  "to  coin  money," 
but  that  it  simply  indicates  the  purpose  for  which  taxes  are 
to  be  laid.  This,  too,  is  the  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court 
(Chief  Justice  Marshall,  in  Gibbons  vs.  Ogden). 

2.    In  "  necessary  and  proper,"  "  necessary  "  would  at  first 
seem  to  be  the  stronger  word.     Why  is  "proper"  added? 
Does  the  passage  mean  that'  a  power  should  not 
"  necessary    be  used,  even  if  necessary,  unless  also  proper  ?     Or 
and  proper"  does  "  necessary  "  mean  merely  convenient?     The 
latter   interpretation   has   been   adopted   by   the 
courts.      This  phrase  is  the  true  basis  for  the  growth  of  the  doc 
trine  of  implied  powers.     At  Philadelphia  its  possibilities  were 
seen  only  by  Mason  and  Gerry  —  to  be  dreaded  by  them. 

The  Convention  decided  without  great  trouble  that  in  the 
first  Congress  the  Representatives  should  be  divided  among 
East  and  the  thirteen  States  in  proportion  to  population  ;  but 
West  Morris  and  the  New  Englanders  struggled  to  pre 

vent  the  adoption  of  proportional  representation  as  a  perma 
nent  principle.  After  the  government  should  once  have  been 
instituted,  argued  Morris,  let  Congress  provide  for  reappor- 
tionment  (or  refuse  to  provide  it)  as  it  might  think  best 
from  time  to  time.  His  purpose,  he  stated  frankly,  was  to 
prevent  any  true  reapportionment  so  far  as  would  concern 
new  States  from  the  West.  "The  new  States  will  know 
less  of  the  public  interest,"  said  he,  and  "will  not  be  able 
to  furnish  men  equally  enlightened."  Even  in  the  old 
States,  he  added,  "the  back  members  [western  members] 
are  always  the  most  averse  to  the  best  measures."  Several 
other  delegates  urged  that  the  total  representation  from  new 
States  ought  never  to  exceed  that  from  the  original  thirteen. 


AND  SLAVERY  287 

But  the  Virginia  delegation  stood  forth  as  the  champions 
of  the  West.  Mason  argued  unanswerably  that  both 
justice  and  policy  demanded  that  new  States  "be  treated 
as  equals,  and  subjected  to  no  degrading  discriminations." 
This  view  prevailed.  On  motion  of  Randolph,  the  Con 
stitution  itself  provides  for  a  census,  and  for  reapportion- 
ment,  every  tenth  year. 

Another  sectional  quarrel  grew  out  of  this  question  of 
apportionment.     The  South  wanted  slaves  to  count  as  men. 
Many  Northern  members  were  vehemently  opposed  The 
to  this,  both  because  of  a  rising  sentiment  against  "  Federal 
slavery,  and  because  they  feared  an  undue  weight 
for  the  South  in  Congress.     The  outcome  was  the  "Second 
Great  Compromise,"    -  the  three  fifths  ratio,  so  that  five  slaves 
should  count  as  three  free  persons  in  fixing  the  number  of 
Representatives  from  a  State. 

The  "  Third  Great  Compromise,"  also,  was  concerned  with 
slavery.     New  England  wished  Congress  to  have  power  over 
commerce,  so  that  it  might  encourage  American 
shipping  against  foreign  competition.     The  South 
feared  that  Congress,  with  this  power,  might  tax  the  great 
Southern  exports,  cotton,  rice,  and  tobacco,  or  even  prevent 
further  importation  of  slaves.     Finally  Congress  was  given 
power  to  regulate  commerce,  providing,  however,  (1)  that  it 
should  not  tax  exports ;    and  (2)  that  for  twenty  years  it 
should  not  forbid  the  importation  of  slaves. 

Georgia  and  South  Carolina  felt  that  they  must  have  more 
slaves  to  develop  their  rice  swamps,  and  made  it  clear  that  they 
would  not  come  into  the  Union  unless  their  interests  in  this  matter 
were  guarded.  Virginia,  Delaware,  and  Maryland  (and  North 
Carolina  in  part)  had  already  prohibited  the  foreign  slave  trade 
by  State  laws.  The  most  powerful  advocate  of  national  prohibition 
upon  the  trade  was  George  Mason,  a  great  Virginia  slaveholder. 
He  pointed  out  the  futility  of  State  restrictions,  if  the  vast  North 
west  was  to  be  filled  with  slaves  through  the  ports  of  South  Carolina 
and  Georgia,  and  he  argued  therefore  that  the  matter  concerned 
not  those  States  alone.  "Slavery,"  he  continued,  "discourages 
arts  and  manufactures.  The  poor  despise  labor  when  performed 


288  MAKING  THE  CONSTITUTION 

by  slaves.  They  prevent  the  immigration  of  Whites,  who  really 
strengthen  a  country.  They  produce  the  most  pernicious  effect  on 
manners.  Every  master  of  slaves  is  born  a  petty  tyrant.  They 
bring  the  judgment  of  heaven  on  a  country.  As  nations  cannot 
be  punished  in  the  next  world,  they  must  be  in  this." 

The  Judiciary  has  been  called  fitly  "that  part  of  our  govern 
ment  on  which  the  rest  hinges "  :  it  decides  controversies 
The  between  States,  and  between  State  and  Nation  ;  it 

judiciary  even  overrides  Congress  ;  and  its  life  tenure  makes 
it  independent  of  control. 

1.  A  final  arbiter  was  needed  somewhere,  in  case  of  con 
flict  between  State  and  Nation.     The  Virginia  Plan  gave 
the  decision  to  the  Federal  legislature.     The  New  Jersey 
Plan  gave  it  to  the  State  judiciaries.     It  was  finally  placed 
in  the  Federal  judiciary  by  a  provision  for  appeals  from  State 
courts.     This   clause  was   "the   sleeping  lion  of  the   Con 
stitution."     Its  importance  seems  not  to  have  been  fully 
understood  at  the  time,  even  in  the  Convention.     Had  its 
bearing  been  comprehended  by  the  people  of  the  country, 
the    Constitution    would    almost   certainly    have   failed    of 
ratification. 

2.  The  power  to  declare  an  Act  of  Congress  void  does  not 
come  from  any  express  provision  of  the  Constitution.     It  is 
based  upon  judicial  custom  in  England  and  America.     Cen 
turies   before,  in   conflicts   between   king   and   parliament, 
English  courts  had  sometimes  claimed  the  right  to  say  which 
authority  should  prevail.     This  rare  power  of  the  English 
judiciary  had  now  virtually  disappeared,  because  the  Eng 
lish  Revolution  of  1688  had  done  away  with  such  conflicts. 
Throughout    colonial    times,    however,    the    English    privy 
council,  acting  as  a  court  of  appeal,  had  voided  Acts  of 
colonial    legislatures    which    it    thought    in    conflict    with 
charters   or  with  English  laws.     As   soon   as  the  colonies 
became  States,  the  State  courts  assumed  the  like  right  to 
decide  between  State  legislation  and  more  fundamental  law 
(a  State  constitution,  or  an  ancient  principle  of  the  Common 
law). 


THE  FEDERAL  JUDICIARY  289 

Such  cases  had  been  very  rare.     In  New  Jersey,  in  1780, 
the  highest  court  declared  an  act  of  the  legislature  void 
because  inconsistent  with  the  State  Constitution  its  power 
("Holmes    vs.    Walton")    and    three   of   the    New  to  veto  _ 
Jersey  delegates  at  Philadelphia  had  been  connected  a^uncon- 
with  the  case,  on  the  bench  or  as  counsel.     There  stitutionai 
was   a  like  decision  in  Virginia  in   1782,   and  an  opinion 
to  the  same  effect  from  the  North  Carolina  court  just  as 
the  Philadelphia  Convention   was  gathering.      The  Rhode 
Island  case  has  been  described.      These  seem  to  be  the  only 
instances  from  1776  to  1787,  and,  outside  the  lawyer  class, 
the  people  resented  the  practice  bitterly.     Even  within  the 
Convention,  some  members  disliked  it ;  but  they  understood 
clearly  that  the  Federal  courts  would  test  Federal  legislation 
by  comparing  it  with  the  Constitution,  and  would  void  such 
acts  as  were  "plainly"  unconstitutional. 

Since  that  time,  however,  the  power  has  been  extended, 
both  by  Federal  and  State  courts,  to  a  degree  undreamed 
in  1787  by  its  most  ardent  champions.1  Especially  has 
this  been  true  of  the  Federal  Supreme  Court,  which,  be 
cause  of  its  life  tenure,  has  been  more  independent  of  pub 
lic  opinion  than  State  Courts  have  been.  Through  this 
development,  the  Supreme  Court  has  become  not  merely 
the  "guardian"  of  the  Constitution,  but  also  the  chief 
"amender"  of  the  Constitution. 

3.    Hamilton  and  his  group  failed  to  get  life  tenure  for 
President  and  Senate ;   but  they  did  get  it  for  the  judiciary. 
In  early  English  history,  the  judges  had  been  re-  its  life 
movable  at  the  king's  pleasure.    The  Stuart  tyrants  tenure 
abused  this  power  and  debased  the  courts  into  servile  tools. 
Therefore  the  English  Revolution  of    1688  provided  that 
judges  should  be  removed  only  "on  address."     That  is,  a  judge 
held  for  life,  unless  two  thirds  of  parliament  voted  that  he 
should  be  removed.     For  such  vote,   however,  no  formal 

1  In  one  year  recently  (1906)  101  State  laws  were  declared  unconstitutional  by 
supreme  courts,  State  or  Federal.  This  peculiar  American  power  of  the  courts 
is  not  a  necessary  accompaniment  of  a  written  constitution.  It  is  not  found  in 
any  of  the  European  republics  with  written  constitutions. 


290  MAKING  THE  CONSTITUTION 

trial  was  necessary,  or  even  formal  charges  of  wrong 
doing.  English  courts  were  made  dependent  upon  the 
approval  of  parliament. 

But  the  Federal  Constitution  gave  the  courts  a  tenure 
more  independent  than  had  ever  been  known  in  England. 
Federal  judges  hold  "during  good  behavior,"  and  can  be 
removed,  not  by  address,  but  only  by  impeachment,  —  i.e. 
conviction  for  "treason,  bribery,  or  other  high  crime  or 
misdemeanor,"  by  a  two-thirds  vote  of  the  Senate,  after 
legal  trial  upon  specific  charges.  Without  affording  any 
opening  for  such  charges,  the  judiciary  may  thwart  the 
popular  will  and  the  will  of  every  other  branch  of  the 
government  for  years. 

The  men  of  the  Convention  meant  to  establish  a  true 
electoral  college  to  choose  the  President.  They  thought  they 
The  had  done  so,  and  they  prided  themselves  particu- 

eiectorai  larly  upon  this  part  of  their  work.  They  supposed 
there  would  be  chosen  in  each  State  a  select  body 
of  men,  of  high  social  standing  and  large  property,  and  that 
these  several  bodies  would  appoint  a  chief  executive  after 
calm  deliberation.  But  the  growth  of  sentiment  for  popular 
government,  together  with  the  development  of  party  nominations, 
has  made  the  electoral  college  obsolete.  The  form,  indeed, 
survives.  Technically  each  "elector  "  is  still  at  liberty  to  vote 
his  private  choice  for  President  and  to  change  his  mind,  be 
fore  voting,  as  often  as  he  likes.  But,  in  reality,  each 
"elector"  is  chosen  to  vote  for  a  particular  candidate;  and 
unwritten  law  makes  it  impossible  for  him  to  think  of  doing 
otherwise.  The  "electors"  have  been  transformed  into 
"mere  letter  carriers."  The  voter  rarely  reads  their  names 
on  the  tickets. 

The  theory  Eighteenth  century  liberals  believed  in  "checks 
of  checks  and  balances'9  in  government.  In  England,  be- 
ancesfn  ^ore  tne  year  1400,  centuries  of  struggle  against 
England  an  irresponsible  monarchy  had  built  into  the  "con- 
ad  America  stitution"  a  system  of  reciprocal  checks.  No 
one  part  of  the  government  —  king,  lords,  or  commons  — 


PROPERTY  RIGHTS  291 

could  do  anything  of  consequence  against  the  determined 
opposition  of  any  other  part.  This  elaborate  system  of 
balances  had  been  a  victory  for  freedom ;  and  it  came  to  be 
looked  upon  as  a  necessary  feature  of  free  government.  After 
the  publication  of  Blackstone's  law  writings  (1770),  the 
"separation  of  powers"  (i.e.  the  reciprocal  independence  of 
executive,  legislative,  and  judicial  departments)  became 
almost  an  axiom  in  English  political  thought. 

In  reality,  however,  as  we  can  now  see,  English  practice  by 
1787  was  already  a  century  ahead  of  the  doctrine.  The 
Revolution  of  1688  had  made  the  popular  branch  of  the 
government  supreme,  except  for  a  modified  veto  by  the 
Lords.  The  system  of  "  checks  "  had  practically  disappeared 
in  England  (in  favor  of  a  truer  democracy),  when  it  was 
adopted,  in  most  elaborate  form,  in  this  American  Con 
stitution.  Moreover,  while  in  England  it  had  been  originally 
devised  as  a  protection  against  an  arbitrary  monarch,  it  was 
adopted  in  America  mainly  as  a  protection  against  a  "tur 
bulent  people."  The  "balances"  in  the  Constitution  have 
sometimes  made  for  stability,  but  they  have  also  often  pro 
duced  harmful  deadlocks.  When  the  people,  after  a  long 
campaign,  have  deliberately  chosen  a  House  of  Represen 
tatives  to  carry  out  their  settled  policy,  they  often  have  to 
wait  two  years  to  get  around  a  Presidential  veto,  and  per 
haps  two  years  or  four  years  more  before  they  have  a  chance 
to  change  a  hostile  hold-over  majority  in  the  Senate.  Even 
then,  a  Supreme  Court,  by  a  vote  of  five  to  four,  may  nullify 
the  popular  will  for  a  generation  longer. 

Repeatedly  the  Convention  refused  to  entertain  a  motion 
for  a  bill  of  rights  for  men ;  l   but,  besides  the  guardianship 
for  wealth  expected  from  Senate,  President,  and  Absenceof 
Supreme  Court,  it  inserted  two  express  provisions  to  a  bill  of 
shield  property.      (1)  Even  the  Federal  government  nght£ 
can  take  private  property  only  "by  due  process  of  law," 

1  Articles  IV  and  VI  of  the  Constitution,  it  is  true,  do  contain  some  essential 
provisions  of  a  bill  of  rights,  —  the  strict  definition  of  treason  as  compared  with 
the  meaning  of  that  term  in  many  other  countries ;  the  prohibition  against  ex  post 
facto  laws  and  bills  of  attainder;  and  the  restriction  upon  suspension  of  the  writ 
of  habeas  corpus. 


292  MAKING  THE  CONSTITUTION 

i.e.  through  the  decision  of  a  court  after  judicial  trial ;  and 
(2)  the  States  are  forbidden  to  pass  any  law  "impairing  the 
Security  for  obligation  of  contracts."  By  reason  of  these 
property  clauses,  says  President  Hadley  of  Yale,  property 
interests  in  America  are  "in  a  stronger  position  against 
any  attempt  at  government  control  than  they  are  in  any 
European  country."  (The  Independent,  April  16,  1908.) 

President  Hadley  points  out  that  the  first  provision  has 
resulted  in  "preventing  a  majority  of  the  voters,  acting 
in  the  legislature  or  through  the  courts  (the  convenient 
European  methods),  from  correcting  evils  in  railroad  build 
ing  or  factory  operation  until  the  stockholders  or  owners  have 
had  opportunity  to  have  the  case  tried  in  the  courts" ;  and,  as 
the  same  article  makes  plain,  the  courts  have  usually  been 
inclined  to  favor  the  vested  property  interests.  The  perni 
cious  results  of  the  second  provision  could  not  well  have 
been  foreseen.  They  have  come  about  through  a  remark 
able  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court  (the  Dartmouth  College 
Case,  1819)  extending  the  meaning  of  the  word  "contract" 
to  include  even  the  grants  of  privilege  and  power  made  by 
a  State  itself  to  public-service  corporations.  As  a  conse 
quence,  many  such  corporations  have  been  inviolably  in 
trenched,  for  an  indefinite  period,1  in  special  privileges 
which  they  got  from  corrupt  legislatures  and  for  which  they 
give  no  fit  return  to  society.  In  the  hundred  years  from 
1803  to  1903,  the  Federal  Supreme  Court  declared  fifty-seven 
State  laws  unconstitutional  on  the  ground  that  they  impaired 
the  obligation  of  some  "contract."  Most  of  these  had  aimed 
only  at  needful  regulation  of  great  corporations  in  the  interest 
of  social  well-being,  —  such  legislation  as  is  common  in  Eu 
ropean  democracies  like  England  or  France  or  Switzerland. 

1  According  to  the  spirit  of  this  decision,  unless  the  State  has  limited  the  life 
time  of  a  grant,  or  has  expressly  reserved  its  own  right  to  change  the  grant  at  will, 
the  grant  runs  forever.  In  recent  years,  the  States  have  in  great  measure  guarded 
themselves  against  such  danger  for  the  future  by  expressly  reserving  their  right  to 
modify  all  such  grants.  A  recent  amendment  to  the  constitution  of  Wisconsin 
runs:  "All  acts  [dealing  with  corporations]  may  be  altered  and  repealed  by  the 
legislature  at  any  time.'1''  This  provision,  now,  is  a  part  of  the  "contract"  when 
the  Wisconsin  legislature  grants  a  franchise. 


THE  FRANCHISE  293 

The  Convention  would  have  liked  a  much  more  aristo 
cratic  Constitution ;   but  the  members  saw  that  if  the  Con 
stitution  were  clearly  less  democratic  than  a  given  Democracy 
State   constitution,   it  would  be   hard   to   secure  inevitable 
ratification  in  that  State.     It  was  not  going  to  be  easy  to 
get  States  enough  at  best.     And  so  we  owe  such  democratic 
character  as  the  Constitution  has,  in  great  degree,  to  the  rela 
tively  unknown  men,  who,  ten  years  before,  framed  the  Revolu 
tionary  State  constitutions. 

This  was  shown  in  the  settlement  of  the  franchise.  The 
House  of  Representatives  was  the  only  part  of  the  govern 
ment  left  to  be  chosen  directly  by  "the  people."  The 
But  who  were  "the  people"  in  this  political  sense  ?  franchise 
Hamilton,  Morris,  and  Dickinson  strove  earnestly  to  limit  the 
franchise  to  freeholders,  —  so  as  to  exclude  "those  multi 
tudes  without  property  and  without  principle,  with  whom 
our  country,  like  all  others,  will,  in  time,  abound."  Even 
Madison  expressed  himself  as  theoretically  in  favor  of  such 
restriction,  fearing  that  a  propertyless  majority  would  either 
plunder  the  rich  or  become  the  tools  of  an  aristocracy. 
Franklin  argued  vigorously  against  the  restriction,  urging 
the  educational  value  of  the  franchise  for  the  masses ;  and 
George  Mason,  in  the  language  of  his  bill  of  rights  of  1776, 
declared,  "The  true  idea  is  that  every  man  having  evidence 
of  attachment  to  the  community,  and  permanent  common 
interest  with  it,  ought  to  share  in  all  its  rights  and  privileges." 
But  the  defeat  of  the  restriction  was  due  not  to  these  lonely 
champions,  but  to  the  reminder  that  in  more  than  half  the 
States  the  State  franchise  was  already  wider  than  landholding, 
and  that  no  voter  could  be  expected  to  favor  a  Constitution 
that  would  disfranchise  him  in  the  Federal  government. 
The  provision  finally  adopted,  therefore,  aimed  to  keep  the 
franchise  as  restricted  as  was  compatible  with  probable 
ratification.  The  Federal  franchise  was  to  be  no  wider  in 
any  State  than  the  State  franchise  in  that  State. 

This  arrangement  worked,  unexpectedly,  for  democracy. 
The  States,  acting  one  by  one,  modified  their  constitutions 
in  the  direction  of  democracy  faster  than  one  great  unit  like 


294  MAKING  THE  CONSTITUTION 

the  Nation  .could  have  done ;   and  as  any  State  extended  its 
own  franchise,  so  far  it  extended  also  the  Federal  franchise. 

The  "two  critical  decisions"  of  the  Federal  Convention 
were  :  (1)  to  substitute  a  new  plan  of  government,  —  instead 
The  plan  for  of  trying  merely  to  "patch  up"  the  old  constitu- 
ratification  ^ion  ;  and  (2)  to  put  that  new  government  into  opera 
tion  when  it  should  be  accepted  by  nine  States,  without  waiting 
for  all  of  them.  This  last  decision  was  directly  contrary  to 
instructions  from  the  State  legislatures  which  had  appointed 
the  delegates.  It  was  also  in  conflict  with  a  specific  provision 
in  the  Articles  of  Confederation,  —  to  which  the  States  had 
solemnly  pledged  "their  sacred  faith."  But  men  had  come 
to  see  that  America  must  either  strangle  in  the  grip  of  the 
old  constitution,  or  she  must  break  its  bonds.  Constitutional 
remedy  had  proved  impossible.  Wisely  and  patriotically 
the  Convention  recommended  an  unconstitutional  remedy, 
and  the  country  adopted  it.  The  ratification  of  the  Con 
stitution  was  a  peaceful  revolution.  A  friendly  looker-on 
wrote :  — j 

"  Here,  too,  I  saw  some  pretty  shows :    a  revolution  without 

blows : 

For,  as   I   understood   the  cunning  elves,  the  people  all  re 
volted  from  themselves." 

When  Congress  received  the  Constitution  from  the  Con 
vention,  it  recommended  the  State  legislatures  to  call  State 

conventions  to  accept  or  reject  it.  The  contest 
in  the  was  now  transferred  from  Philadelphia  to  the 

country  at  country  at  large.  The  advocates  of  the  "new 

roof"  shrewdly  took  to  themselves  the  name 
Federalists,1  instead  of  the  unpopular  term  Nationalists,  and 
so  left  to  their  opponents  only  the  weak  appellation  Antifed- 

1  Luther  Martin  of  Maryland,  who  withdrew  from  the  Philadelphia  Convention 
towards  its  close,  in  justifying  his  action  to  the  Maryland  legislature,  explains  that 
the  Convention  had  voted  down  a  resolution  for  a  "federal"  form  of  government 
and  had  adopted  instead  a  resolution  for  a  "national  government"  :.  "Afterwards 
the  word  '  national '  was  struck  out  by  them,  because  they  thought  the  word  might 
tend  to  alarm ;  and  although  now  they  who  advocate  this  system  pretend  to  call 
themselves  federalists,  in  Convention  the  distinction  was  quite  the  reverse." 


FEDERALISTS  AND  ANTIFEDERALISTS  295 

eralists.  A  torrent  of  pamphlets  and  newspaper  articles 
issued  from  the  press,1  and  every  crossroads  was  a  stage  for 
vehement  oratory. 

The  proposed  Constitution  was  attacked  partly  for  its 
encroachments  on  the  States,  partly  for  its  undemocratic 
features.  Opponents  pointed  to  the  absence  of  a  bill  of 
rights,  and  to  the  infrequency  of  elections,  and  to  the  vast 
powers  of  the  President  and  Senate  (parts  of  the  government 
remote  from  popular  control).  George  Mason  asserted 
that  such  a  Constitution  "must  end  either  in  monarchy  or 
tyrannical  aristocracy,"  and  a  sarcastic  democrat,  claiming 
to  be  a  Turk,  praised  the  Constitution  for  "its  resemblance 
to  our  much  admired  Sublime  Porte."  The  real  source  of 
apprehension,  however,  was  not  any  specific  provision  in  the 
document  so  much  as  a  vague  distrust  of  the  aristocratic 
Convention.  Many  people  believed  sincerely  that  the 
meeting  at  Philadelphia  had  been  a  "deep  and  dark  con 
spiracy  against  the  liberties  of  a  free  people."  Thus  "John 
Humble"  ironically  exhorted  his  fellow  "low-born,"  duti 
fully  to  allow  the  few  "well-born"  to  set  up  their  "Divine 
Constitution"  and  rule  the  country. 

Still  both  parties  had  to  admit  the  seriousness  of  the 
existing  situation.  The  Antifederalists  had  no  remedy  to 
propose.  The  Federalists  offered  one  for  which  they  claimed 
no  peculiar  excellence,  but  which,  they  urged,  did  offer 
escape  from  anarchy,  —  probably  the  only  escape  likely  to 
be  available.  Under  such  pressure,  many  a  flaming  Anti- 
federalist,  elected  to  a  State  convention  expressly  to  reject 
the  Constitution,  came  over  to  its  support ;  and  more  per 
sonal  arguments  were  not  omitted.  In  Massachusetts  the 
Federalists  brought  over  Hancock  by  promising  him  a  re 
election  as  governor  and  apparently  implying  strongly 
that  he  should  be  the  first  Vice-President  of  the  new  govern 
ment. 

The  Constitution  was  sent  forth  September  17,  1787.  A 
strenuous  nine-months  campaign  brought  it  a  bare  victory. 

1  The  most  famous  set  of  such  essays  appeared  week  after  week  in  New  York 
papers  under  the  title  The  Federalist,  written  by  Hamilton,  Madison,  and  Jay. 


296  MAKING  THE  CONSTITUTION 

Organized  and  ready,  the  Federalists  at  first  carried  all 
before  them,  securing  ratification  during  December  and 
January  in  Delaware,  New  Jersey,  Georgia,  Connecticut, 
and,  after  a  bitter  struggle,  in  Pennsylvania.  A  long 
debate  and  the  tardy  aid  of  Sam  Adams  converted  a 
hostile  majority  in  Massachusetts,  by  a  close  vote ;  and 
somewhat  later,  Maryland  and  South  Carolina  were  added 
to  the  list,  making  eight  States. 

The  remaining  States  were  long  doubtful  or  opposed. 
North  Carolina  and  Rhode  Island  refused  to  ratify.  They 
Ratification  could  be  spared, —  as  perhaps  could  have  been  New 
byconven-  Hampshire,  whose  convention  had  adjourned  for 
some  months  without  action  ;  but  a  failure  in  New 
York  or  Virginia  would  have  upset  the  whole  movement.  In 
the  conventions  of  both  these  States,  as  in  that  of  Massachu 
setts  and  Pennsylvania,  there  was  at  first  a  strong  hostile 
majority ;  and,  after  many  weeks  of  argument  and  persua 
sion,  to  have  defeated  ratification  would  have  required  in 
Narrow  the  final  vote  a  change  in  Virginia,  of  only  5  out 
majorities  of  168?  an(j  jn  New  York,  of  2  out  of  57.  Even 
these  slim  majorities  for  the  Constitution  were  obtained 
only  by  pledges  from  the  Federalists  that  they  would  join  in 
getting  certain  desired  amendments  as  soon  as  the  new 
government  should  be  in  working  order. 

In  general  the  commercial  centers  favored  the  Con 
stitution,  while  the  agricultural  and  especially  the  western 
sections  opposed  it.  In  all  the  critical  States  a  direct  vote 
of  the  people  would  surely  have  rejected  it.  There  was 
only  one  such  test.  The  Rhode  Island  legislature,  instead 
of  calling  a  convention,  distributed  copies  of  the  Con 
stitution  among  the  voters  and  provided  for  a  popular 
vote.  The  Federalists,  certain  of  defeat,  declaimed  against 
this  method,  and  remained  away  from  the  polls.  The  vote 
stood  2708  to  232,  against  ratification.  Two  years  later,  a 
convention  accepted  the  Constitution,  34  to  32. 

The  New  Hampshire  convention  changed  its  mind,  and 
ratified  on  June  15,  1788  (making  the  ninth  State) ;  but 


RATIFICATION  297 

the  absolutely  essential  accession  of  Virginia  did  not  take 
place  until  June  25,  —  just  in  time  for  word  to  reach 
the  North  for  the  Fourth  of  July  celebrations.  At  Albany 
the  news  caused  the  wildest  excitement.  The  Federalists 
celebrated  by  firing  ten  guns  for  the  new  government.  The 
Antis  retorted  with  thirteen  guns  for  the  Confederation, 
which,  they  claimed,  was  still  the  constitutional  govern 
ment.  Afterwards,  they  made  a  bonfire  of  a  copy  of  the 
new  Constitution  and  of  the  handbills  announcing  Virginia's 
ratification.  In  the  ashes,  the  rallied  Federalists  planted 
a  lofty  pole  with  another  copy  of  the  Constitution  nailed 
to  the  top.  This  Federalist  jubilation  was  justified.  The 

Eighth    Federal    PILLAR    reared 


From  the  Boston  Independent  Chronicle,  June  12,  1788.     (The  Chronicle  guessed 
wrong  as  to  the  order  of  the  9th  and  10th  states.) 

influence  of  Virginia's  accession  and  the  tireless  logic  of 
Hamilton  at  last  prevailed  in  the  New  York  convention, 
and  the  new  Constitution  had  won. 

Who  ratified  the  Constitution?     The  several  States,  as 
States?     Or   one   consolidated   people?     The   second   view 
rests   wholly   on   the   opening   words  of  the  pre-  Ratification 
amble  :   "We,  the  people  of  the  United  States  ...  by  states 
do  ordain  and  establish  this  constitution."    Merely  or  Nation? 
as  language,  these  words  have  no  more  value  than  the  Fifth 
Article  of  the  Constitution,  which  says  twice  that  the  ratify 
ing  parties  are  the  States  :  and  such  slight  significance  as 
the  preamble  might  otherwise  have  disappears  upon  tracing 
its  history. 

The  preamble  appeared  first  in  the  report  of  the  Com 
mittee  of  Detail;    but  it  then  read  "We,  the  people  of  the 


298  RATIFICATION  OF  THE  CONSTITUTION 

States  of  New  Hampshire,  Massachusetts,  Rhode  Island  [and 
so  on  through  the  list]  do  ordain,"  etc.  Plainly,  this  did 
not  mean  a  consolidated  nation.  It  meant  thirteen  peoples, 
each  acting  directly,  not  through  legislatures.  The  Convention 
accepted  this  wording  without  debate.  Almost  at  the  close 
of  the  Convention,  the  Committee  on  Style  changed  the 
words  to  their  present  form.  No  explanation  was  ever 
made  by  a  member  of  the  Convention  for  the  change,  but 
it  explains  itself.  The  Convention  had  now  decided  to  put 
the  new  government  into  operation  between  the  first  nine  States 
ratifying.  It  was  impossible  to  name  these  in  advance, 
and  it  would  be  highly  improper  to  name  any  which  might 
not  come  in ;  so  all  names  were  dropped  out.  No  change 
oj  meaning  was  designed.  The  new  form,  like  the  first,  was 
accepted  without  debate. 

Outside  the  Convention,  however,  this  was  at  first  not 
understood ;  and  States-rights  men  feared  that  the  wording 
did  mean  a  consolidated  people,  —  until  Madison  assured 
them  that  it  did  not.  Samuel  Adams  wrote  to  Richard 
Henry  Lee,  "I  stumble  at  the  threshold."  And  in  the 
Virginia  Convention,  Patrick  Henry  exclaimed,-  "What 
right  had  they  to  say,  '  We,  the  people '  .  .  .  instead  of  '  We, 
the  States '  ?  If  the  States  be  not  the  parties  to  this  com 
pact,  it  must  be  one  great  consolidated  national  government 
of  the  people  of  all  the  States."  Madison  answered  :  "Who 
are  the  parties  ?  The  people ;  but  not  the  people  as  com 
posing  one  great  body:  the  people  as  composing  thirteen 
sovereignties.9'  Otherwise,  he  adds  in  proof,  a  majority 
would  bind  all  the  States;  "but,  sir,  no  State  is  bound,  as 
it  is,  without  its  own  consent."  And  he  went  on  to  explain 
that  the  words  mean  only  that  in  each  State  the  people  were 
to  act  in  the  most  solemn .  way,  not  merely  through  the 
usual  legislative  channel. 

In  the  Federalist  (No.  39)  Madison  amplified  this  thought : 
Ratification  "is  to  be  given  by  the  people,  not  as  individuals, 
but  as  composing  the  distinct  and  independent  States  to 
which  they  respectively  belong.  It  is  the  assent  and  rati- 


BY  THE  STATES  299 

fication  of  the  several  States,  derived  from  the  Supreme 
authority  in  each  State,  —  the  authority  of  the  people 
themselves  [not  merely  from  the  subordinate  authority  of 
the  State  legislature]  .  .  .  Each  State,  in  ratifying  the  Con 
stitution,  is  considered  as  a  sovereign  body,  independent  of 
all  others,  and  only  to  be  bound  by  its  own  voluntary  act." 
This  answer  was  final  at  the  time.  But  thirty  years 
later,  the  doctrine  of  ratification  by  a  consolidated  people 
was  revived  by  Chief  Justice  Marshall.  It  was  soon  given 
added  emphasis  by  the  massive  oratory  of  Daniel  Webster, 
and  the  idea  took  its  place  in  the  mind  of  the  North-  as  an 
essential  article  in  the  creed  of  patriotism.  The  plain, 
historical  fact,  however,  is  that  the  thirteen  States,  looking 
upon  themselves  as  thirteen  distinct  sovereignties,  and, 
feeling  absolutely  free  either  to  accept  or  reject  the  Con 
stitution,  did  decide  to  accept  it,  —  and,  by  so  doing,  made 
possible  the  future  development  of  one  nation.  Says  William 
McDonald  (Jacksonian  Democracy,  109,  110):  — 

"Webster's  doctrine  of  'the  people'  was  a  glorious  fiction.  It 
has  entered  into  the  warp  and  woof  of  our  constitutional  creed ; 
but  it  was  fiction,  nevertheless.  ...  //  anything  is  clear  in  the 
history  of  the  United  States,  it  is  that  the  Constitution  was 
established  by  the  States,  acting  through  conventions  authorized 
by  the  legislatures  thereof,  and  not  by  the  people  of  the  United 
States,  in  any  such  sense  as  Webster  had  in  mind.  .  .  .  No  theory 
could  have  a  slighter  foundation." 


CHAPTER  XVI 

FEDERALIST   ORGANIZATION 
I.   MAKING  THE   CONSTITUTION   MOVE 

SEPTEMBER  13,  1786,  the  dying  Continental  Congress  pro 
vided  for  elections  under  the  new  Constitution.  Nine 
States  were  present  when  that  vote  was  taken.  A  week 
later,  the  attendance  had  sunk  to  six  States.  Thereafter, 
to  keep  up  a  shadow  of  government,  a  few  delegates  met 
day  by  day,  had  their  names  recorded  in  the  journal,  and 
then  adjourned  to  some  favorite  tavern.  Congress  expired 
for  want  of  a  quorum  several  months  before  the  new  govern 
ment  was  organized. 

The  elections  that  made  Washington  President  were  very 
different  from  elections  in  a  presidential  campaign  now. 
The  election  Rhode  Island  and  North  Carolina  had  not  yet 
of  Washing-  come  into  the  union,  and  New  York  lost  her  vote 
(as  explained  on  the  next  page).  Thus  only  ten 
States  took  part.  In  six  of  these,  the  legislatures  chose  the 
presidential  electors.  Pennsylvania,  Maryland,  and  Virginia 
chose  them  by  popular  vote,  in  districts.  Massachusetts 
used  a  quaint  union  of  these  two  methods  (the  people  in 
each  Congressional  district  nominating  three  electors  from 
whom  the  legislature  chose  one  —  with  two  more  at  large  to 
make  up  the  proper  number).  In  no  State  did  the  people  elect 
directly,  on  one  general  ticket,  as  is  almost  always  done  to-day. 

Two  legislatures  gave  forceful  illustrations  of  the  bitter 
ness  of  party  spirit  and  of  disregard  of  the  people's  will  by 
Peculiarities  "delegated"  government.  In  elections  by  legisla- 
of  the  tures,  custom  favored  a  joint  ballot  (the  two  Houses 

voting  as  one  body) ;  and  this  method  was  used 
without  question  in  five  of  the  six  States  which  chose  electors 
by  legislatures.  But  in  New  Hampshire,  the  upper  House 

300 


THE  ELECTIONS  OF  1788  301 

was  Federalist,  while  the  more  numerous  and  more  represent 
ative  lower  House  was  Antifederalist.  The  Senate  insisted 
upon  a  concurrent  vote — as  ordinary  bills  are  passed  —  so  that 
it  might  have  a  veto  on  the  other  House.  The  wrangle  lasted 
for  weeks.  At  the  last  moment,  the  larger  House  sur 
rendered,  and  chose  electors  acceptable  to  the  smaller  one. 
In  New  York  the  situation  was  similar ;  but  there  the  Anti- 
federalist  House  refused  to  yield  its  right,  and  that  State 
lost  its  vote  altogether. 

There  had  been  no  formal  nominations.  Washington 
received  the  69  votes  cast  for  President.  For  Vice  Presi 
dent  there  was  no  such  agreement.  Some  of  the  Antifed- 
eralists  hoped  to  elect  George  Clinton  of  New  York,  Ham 
ilton's  chief  adversary  there ;  but  the  plan  fell  to  pieces 
when  New  York  failed  to  take  part  in  the  election.  Eleven 
names  were  voted  for  by  the  69  electors.  John  Adams  was 
elected,  but  by  only  34  votes,  —  one  less  than  half,  but 
enough  before  the  Twelfth  amendment. 

The  Continental  Congress  had  named  the  first  Wednes 
day  in  March  for  the  inauguration  of  the  new  government  at 
New  York  City.     On  that  day,  however,  only  8  Dilatory 
Senators,  out  of  22,  and  13  Representatives,  out  methods  of 
of  59,  had  arrived,  and  the  electoral  votes  could  not  Congress 
be  counted.     The  two  Houses  met  from  day  to  day,  for  roll 
call,  and  sent  occasional  urgent  entreaties  to  dilatory  mem 
bers  in  neighboring  States;    but  not  till  almost  five  weeks 
later    (April   6)    was   the   necessary    quorum   secured.     On 
April  30,  Washington  was  inaugurated  with  great  state  and 
solemnity.     It  is  easier  to  understand  these  delays  when  we 
remember  that  Washington,  now  nearly  sixty  years  old,  had 
to  make  the  twelve-day  journey  from  Mount  Vernon  to  New 
York  on  horseback. 

For  nearly  three  weeks,  Congress  wrangled  over  matters 
of    ceremony.     After    solemn    deliberation,    the  The 
Senate  recommended  that  Washington  be  styled  tion  of*  titles 
"His  Highness,  President  of  the  United  States  of  and  royal 
America  and  the  Protector  of  the  Liberties  of  the 
Same."   (John  Adams  would  have  preferred  "His  Majesty 


302 


THE  FEDERALIST  PERIOD,   1788-1800 


as 


"His 

speech." 


the  President.")     The  more  democratic  Representatives  in 
sisted  on  giving  only  the  title  used  in  the  Constitution  - 
"President  of  the  United  States."  Finally  this  House  sent 

an  address  to  Washing 
ton  by  this  title;  and 
the  Senate  had  to  lay 
aside  its  tinsel. 

During  the  debate, 
one  particularly  quaint 
episode  occurred.  The 
minutes  of  the  Senate 
referred  to  the  speech 
with  which  Washington 
had  "opened"  Congress 
most  gracious 
This  was  the 
form  always  used  in  the 
English  parliament  re 
garding  the  speech  from 
the  Throne.  Senator 
Maclay  objected  to  the 
phrase,  and  finally  it  was 
struck  from  the  record. 
Vice  President  Adams, 
however,  defended  it 
hotly,  declaring  (accord 
ing  to  Maclay)  that  if  he  could  have  foreseen  such  agitation, 
he  "would  never  have  drawn  his  sword"  against  England  in 
the  Revolution.  Maclay  tells  1  us,  too,  that  Adams  (presid- 

1  William  Maclay,  from  western  Pennsylvania,  was  one  of  the  few  democratic 
Senators.  During  his  term  of  office  he  kept  a  diary,  quite  in  the  Pepys  style, 
with  exceedingly  intimate  entries  (as  to  weekly  or  more  occasional  baths,  for  in 
stance)  but  also  with  much  exceedingly  valuable  matter.  This  Journal  should 
be  accessible  to  every  student  of  this  period.  Maclay  was  an  honest,  well-meaning, 
rather  suspicious  man,  without  breadth  of  view,  or  social  graces,  but  with  an  ardent 
belief  in  popular  government.  He  was  no  hero  worshiper.  John  Adams  (his 
pet  aversion)  is  credited  with  "  a  ve'ry  silly  kind  of  laugh  .  .  .  the  most  unmeaning 
simper  that  ever  dimpled  the  face  of  folly."  Madison  is  styled  "  His  Littleness." 
Hamilton  appears  with  "  a  very  boyish  giddy  manner."  And  even  Jefferson  wears 
"  a  rambling,  vacant  look." 


JOHN  ADAMS.  From  the  Stuart  portrait,  now 
belonging  to  the  New  York  Historical 
Society. 


OLD  WORLD  TRAPPINGS  LAID  ASIDE  303 

ing  in  the  Senate)  spoke  forty  minutes  from  the  chair  in 
opposition  to  the  simple  form  of  title  for  the  President. 
"What,-"  he  exclaimed,  "will  the  common  people  of  other 
countries,  what  will  the  sailors  and  soldiers,  say  of  'George 
Washington,  President  of  the  United  States'?  They  will 
despise  him  to  all  eternity  !"  On  the  other  hand,  Senator 
Gray  son  of  Virginia  wrote  indignantly,  in  a  letter  to  Patrick 
Henry,—  "Is  it  not  strange  that  John  Adams,  son  of  a  tinker 
and  creature  of  the  people,  should  be  for  titles,  dignities,  and 
preheminences ! "  And  Jefferson,  in  Paris,  exulted  at  the 
defeat  of  the  proposed  title:  "I  hope  that  the  titles  of 
Excellency,  Honor,  Worship,  Esquire,  forever  disappear 
from  among  us  from  that  moment.  I  wish  that  of  Mr. 
["Master, "still  connoting  social  rank]  would  follow  them." 

Soon  after,  the  struggle  was  renewed  on  the  bill  to  estab 
lish  the  mint.  It  was  proposed  that  each  coin  should  bear 
the  image  of  the  President  during  whose  administration  it 
was  coined  —  after  the  fashion  of  all  royal  coinage.  A  few 
radicals  attacked  this  "disposition  to  ape  monarchic  prac 
tice,"  and  the  proposal  was  dropped,  in  favor  of  the  use  of 
an  emblematic  and  none  too  artistic  "Goddess  of  Liberty." 

It  has  been  too  much  the  custom  to  ridicule  the  ob 
jectors  to  these  "harmless"  forms  and  titles  in  this  critical 
struggle  for  simplicity.  The  titles  were  "harm-  „ 

i         "        u  •   •*     •  u-   u     o-u  j        Victory  for 

less    ;     but  the    spirit   in   which   they   were  de-  simplicity 
manded  was  not.     That  spirit  was  quite  as  vio-  and  de~ 
lent  and  ridiculous  as  was  the  democratic  opposi 
tion  to  it.     The  aristocrats  believed  that  government  ought 
to  be  hedged  about  with  ceremonial  to  secure  due  reverence 
from  its  "subjects."     It  is  easy  to  find  matter  for  laughter 
in  some  acts  of  the  democratic  opposition ;   but  at  least  let 
us  acknowledge  gratefully  our  debt  to  it  for  turning  the  cur 
rent  of  American  practice  away  from  Old  World  trappings 
of  childish  or  slavish  ceremonial  toward  manly  simplicity 
and  democratic  common  sense. 

Other  questions  had  to  do  not  merely  with  ceremony, 
but  with  power.  The  Constitution  requires  the  consent 
of  the  Senate  to  Presidential  appointments  and  to  treaties, 


304  THE  FEDERALIST  PERIOD,   1788-1800 

but  does  not  say  how  that  consent  shall  be  given.  Wash 
ington  and  his  Cabinet  were  at  first  inclined  to  treat 
Evolution  ^ne  Senate  as  an  English  monarch  treated  his 
of  Con-  Privy  Council.  When  the  first  nomination  for 
practice141  a  f°reign  minister  came  up  (June  17),  Vice  Presi- 
President  dent  Adams  attempted  to  take  the  "advice  and 
consent"  of  the  Senators  one  by  one,  viva  voce. 
This  attack  upon  the  independence  of  the  Senate  was  foiled 
by  Maclay,  who  insisted  upon  vote  by  ballot. 

A  still  more  important  incident  concerned  a  treaty  with 
certain  Indian  tribes.  Instead  of  sending  the  printed  docu 
ment  to  the  Senate  for  consideration  (as  is  done  now), 
Washington  came  in  person  (August  22),  took  the  Vice 
President's  presiding  chair,  asked  Secretary  Knox  to  read 
the  treaty  aloud  (which  was  done  hurriedly  and  indistinctly) , 
and  then  called  at  once  for  "advice  and  consent,9'  to  be  given 
in  his  presence.  As  Maclay  properly  observes,  there  was 
"no  chance  for  a  fair  investigation  while  the  President  of 
the  United  States  sat  there  with  his  Secretary  of  War  to 
support  his  opinions  and  overawe  the  timid  and  neutral." 
The  question  was  being  put,  when  Maclay's  sturdy  repub 
licanism  once  more  intervened.  He  called  for  certain  other 
papers  bearing  on  the  subject,  and  this  resulted  in  post 
ponement.  Maclay  asserts  that  Washington  received  the 
first  interruption  with  "an  aspect  of  stern  displeasure," 
and  that  at  the  close  he  "started  up  in  a  violent  fret,"  ex 
claiming,  "This  defeats  every  purpose  of  my  coming  here." 
The  whole  incident  should  give  some  comfort  to  those 
Americans  who  grieve  at  recent  dissensions  between  Presi 
dent  and  Senate  over  treaties  of  mightier  import. 

The  Constitution,  by  its  language,  suggests  single  heads 
for  executive  departments  (rather  than  the  committees  cus- 
Evolution  ternary  under  the  old  Confederation) .  Congress  at 
of  the  once  established  the  departments  of  State,  Treas 

ury,  and  War,  —  together  with  an  Attorney-Gen 
eralship.  Washington  appointed  as  the  three  "Secretaries," 
Jefferson,  Hamilton,  and  Henry  Knox,  and  made  Edmund 


THE  JUDICIARY  OF   1789  305 

Randolph  the  Attorney-General.  These  officials  were  de 
signed,  separately,  to  advise  and  assist  the  President ;  but 
neither  the  Act  of  Congress  nor  the  Constitution  made  any 
reference  to  them  as  a  collective  body,  —  that  is,asa"  Cabinet." 
Indeed,  several  proposals  for  such  an  advisory  council  had 
been  voted  down  in  the  Federal  Convention.  Only  by  custom 
has  the  Cabinet  become  an  important  part  of  our  government. 
The  Constitution  provides  merely  that  the  President  "may 
require  the  opinion,  in  writing,  of  the  principal  officer  in 
each  of  the  executive  departments,  upon  any  subject  re 
lating  to  the  duties  of  their  respective  offices"  This  gives  no 
warrant  for  asking  advice,  for  instance,  from  the  Secretary 
of  War  upon  a  matter  of  finance ;  but  almost  at  once  Wash 
ington  began  to  treat  the  group  as  one  official  family.  When 
he  was  troubled  as  to  the  constitutionality  of  the  Bank 
Bill  (page  312),  he  asked  both  Hamilton  and  Jefferson  for 
written  opinions ;  and,  in  1793,  when  the  war  between 
England  and  France  raised  serious  questions  as  to  the  proper 
policy  for  America  (page  321),  he  called  the  three  Secretaries 
and  Randolph  into  personal  counsel  in  a  body.  This  was 
the  first  "Cabinet  meeting."  1 

The  Constitution  made  it  the  duty  of  Congress  to  pro 
vide  a  Supreme  Court.     The  "original  jurisdiction"  of  that 
Court  was  stated  in  the  Constitution ;  but  Congress  The 
was  left  at  liberty  to  regulate  the  appellate  jurisdic-  Judiciary 
tion,  and  to  provide  inferior  courts,  or  not,  at  its  dis-  Act 
cretion.    A  Judiciary  Act  of  1789  established  a  system  of  which 
the  main  features  still  remain.     (1)  A  Supreme  Court  (a  Chief 
Justice  and  five  Associate  Justices)  was  created,  to  sit  at  the 
Capital ;  (2)  thirteen  District  Courts,  each  with  a  resident 

1  From  time  to  time  Congress  has  decreed  new  departments.  In  1798  a  Secre 
tary  of  the  Navy  was  given  part  of  the  duties  of  the  old  Department  of  War.  The 
Post  Office  was  established  in  1790  as  a  part  of  the  Treasury  Department,  but 
in  1829  the  Postmaster  General  became  the  equal  of  the  other  heads  of  depart 
ments.  In  1849  there  was  added  a  Department  of  the  Interior;  and  out  of  this 
were  carved  the  Department  of  Agriculture,  in  1889,  and  the  Department  of 
Commerce  and  Labor  in  1903.  The  last  was  again  divided  in  1913  into  the 
Department  of  Commerce  and  the  Department  of  Labor.  The  Attorney  General  be 
came  the  head  of  a  Department  of  Justice  in  1870. 


306  THE  FEDERALIST  PERIOD,   1788-1800 

judge,  were  established,  covering  the  entire  Union ;  and  (3) 
appeals  to  the  Supreme  Court  were  provided  for,  not  only  from 
inferior  Federal  courts,  but  also  from  any  State  court,  in  all 
cases  where  such  a  court  had  denied  any  right  or  power  claimed 
under  a  Federal  law  or  treaty  or  under  the  Constitution. 

This  part  of  the  law  still  makes  the  Federal  judiciary 
the  "final  arbiter"  between  States  and  Nation.  Con 
gress  might  have  given  very  narrow  limits  to  the  appellate 
power,  but  this  great  law  extended  that  power  so  as  to 
include  every  possible  case  of  conflict  between  States 
and  Nation. 

The  establishment  of  the  inferior  Federal  courts  also 
greatly  magnified  the  authority  of  the  Federal  judi 
ciary  at  the  expense  of  State  courts,  since  it  made 
Federal  courts  much  more  accessible  than  if  there  had 
been  only  one  court,  fixed  at  Washington. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  power  of  the  Supreme  Court  was  soon 
limited  by  an  amendment  to  the  Constitution.  The  first  decision 
"  Chisholm  to  draw  public  attention  to  its  enormous  powers  was 
vs.  Georgia"  jn  the  case  of  Chisholm  vs.  Georgia,  in  1793.  Chis 
holm,  a  citizen  of  South  Carolina,  sued  to  recover  a  debt  from 
the  State  of  Georgia.  The  Constitution  states  that  "the 
judicial  power  shall  extend  ...  to  controversies  between  a 
State  and  citizens  of  another  State."  Georgia,  however, 
claimed  that  this  phrase  meant  only  that  a  State  could  sue 
private  citizens  in  the  Federal  Court,  not  that  a  State 
could  itself  be  sued  by  private  individuals.  The  words 
must  be  taken  in  the  light  of  the  State-sovereignty  ideas  of 
that  era;  and,  beyond  all  doubt,  this  understanding  of 
Georgia  was  the  general  understanding  when  the  Consti 
tution  was  ratified.  In  the  ratifying  conventions,  fear  had 
been  sometimes  expressed  that  the  clause  might  enable  a 
private  citizen  to  sue  "a  sovereign  State."  In  all  such  cases, 
the  leading  Federalists  explained  that  such  meaning  was 
impossible.  Madison,  in  the  Virginia  convention,  declared 
the  objection  "without  reason,"  because  "it  is  not  in  the 
power  of  individuals  to  call  any  State  into  court."  In  the 


THE  JUDICIARY  LIMITED  BY  AMENDMENT         307 

same  debate,  John  Marshall  (afterwards  Chief  Justice),  in 
defending  the  clause,  exclaimed  :  - 

"  I  hope  no  gentleman  will  think  that  a  State  will  be  called  at 
the  bar  of  a  Federal  Court.  ...  It  is  not  natural  to  suppose 
that  the  sovereign  power  should  be  dragged  before  a  court.  The 
intent  is  to  enable  States  to  recover  claims  against  individuals 
residing  in  other  States."  And  Hamilton  in  the  Federalist 
(No.  81)  declared  any  other  view  "  altogether  forced  and  un 
accountable,"  because  "  it  is  inherent  in  the  nature  of  sovereignty 
not  to  be  amenable  to  the  suit  of  an  individual  without  its  own 
consent." 

Now,  however,  the  Court,  by  a  divided  vote,  assumed 
jurisdiction.  Georgia  refused  to  appear,  and  judgment 
went  against  her.  Georgia  thereupon  threatened  death 
"without  benefit  of  clergy"  to  any  Federal  marshal  who 
should  attempt  to  collect  the  award.  Civil  war  was  im 
minent.  Similar  suits  were  pending  in  other  States,  and 
there  was  widespread  alarm.  The  legislatures  of  Massa 
chusetts,  Connecticut,  and  Virginia  passed  vigorous  resolu 
tions  denouncing  the  Court's  decision  as  "dangerous  to  the 
peace,  safety,  and  independence  of  the  several  States." 
Then  Congress  by  almost  unanimous  vote  submitted  to  the 
States  the  Eleventh  amendment,  which  was  promptly 
ratified.  This  amendment  reversed  the  decision  of  the  Su 
preme  Court,  and  completely  upheld  Georgia's  contention. 

By  like  action,  even  earlier,  the  people  had  sought  to  limit 
the  powers  of  the  Federal  government  by  modifying  the 
written  document  that  defined  those  powers.  In-  The  "  BUI 
deed  such  limitation  was  essentially  part  of  a  bar-  of  Rlshts 
gain  which  had  secured  the  ratification  of  the  Constitution 
(page  296) .  Seven  of  the  ratifying  State  conventions  had  pro 
posed  amendments  to  the  Constitution,  124  in  number,  and 
the  more  important  ones  the  Federalist  leaders  had  pledged 
themselves  to  secure.  Accordingly,  early  in  the  first  ses 
sion  of  the  first  Congress,  Madison  introduced  a  list  of  twenty 
amendments.  Twelve  were  adopted  by  Congress,  and  ten 
were  ratified  by  the  States.  These  are  commonly  known  as 
"  The  Bill  of  Rights,"  and  they  supply  a  lack  which  had  been 


308  THE  FEDERALIST  PERIOD,   1788-1800 

generally  and  vehemently  criticized.  They  forbid  Congress  1 
to  interfere  with  freedom  of  religion,  freedom  of  the  press,  or 
freedom  of  petition,  and  they  prohibit  general  warrants 
or  excessive  bail  or  cruel  and  unusual  punishments.  They 
further  guarantee  to  citizens  a  right  to  trial  by  a  jury  of  the 
neighborhood  in  criminal  accusations  and  in  civil  cases 
when  the  amount  in  dispute  exceeds  twenty  dollars.  The 
Ninth  and  Tenth  amendments  emphasize  the  idea  that  the 
Federal  government  is  limited  to  those  powers  enumerated 
in  the  Constitution.  Recently  the  aftermath  of  the  World 
War  has  given  peculiar  importance  to  the  First  amend 
ment  :  "  Congress  shall  make  no  law  respecting  an  estab 
lishment  of  religion,  or  prohibiting  the  free  exercise  thereof ; 
or  abridging  freedom  of  speech,  or  of  the  press;  or  the  right 
of  the  people  peaceably  to  assemble  and  to  petition  the  govern 
ment  for  a  redress  of  grievances." 

II.   HAMILTON'S  FINANCE 

Congress  made  appropriations  the  first  year  amounting 
to  $640,000  —  about  one  hundredth  as  much  per  citizen  as 
.  the  cost  of  government  in  recent  years,  even  before 

iJw  govern-  the  World  War  —  and  it  provided  for  this  expense 
ment  sub-  by  a  iow  tariff.  The  rates  averaged  about  7-J  per 
cent,  and  the  bill  was  based  upon  the  idea  in  the 
attempted  "revenue  amendments"  of  1781  and  1783  (page 
269) .  Pennsylvania  members,  however,  secured  some  altera 
tions  intended  to  "protect"  American  manufactures,  and 
this  purpose  was  finally  stated  in  the  title  of  the  bill. 
Strictly  speaking,  however,  the  law  remained  a  tariff  for 
revenue,  with  "incidental  protective  features." 

Meanwhile  Hamilton,  with  marvelous  skill  and  industry, 
had  worked  out  a  plan  to  care  for  the  old  debts  and  to  put 
the  chaotic  finances  of  the  nation  in  order.  First  he  rec- 

1  These  amendments  were  intended  to  restrict  the  Central  government  only, 
but  many  people  think  of  the  restrictions  as  applying  to  the  States,  also.  Con 
gress  can  give  no  religion  preference  over  another;  but  a  State  legislature  may  do 
so,  —  unless  forbidden  by  the  State  constitution.  Some  States  did  have  "es 
tablished  churches"  for  many  years  longer. 


HAMILTON'S  FINANCE  309 

ommended  that  the  government  "fund"  the  continental  debt 
(both  the  $11,500,000  due  abroad  and  the  $40,500,000  of 
"certificates"  held  at  home),  by  taking  it  up,  at  Funding  the 
face  value,  in  exchange  for  new  bonds  payable  in  National 
fifteen  and  twenty  years.     (About  a  third  of  this  d 
domestic  debt  consisted  of  unpaid  interest.) 

To  make  full  provision  for  the  foreign  part  of  this  debt 
was  inevitable,  if  the  United  States  was  to  have  standing 
among  the  nations.  Congress  gave  unanimous 

.,.  rr,  f  The  contest 

approval  to  this  part  ot  the  scheme,  but  many  over  the 
members  objected  to  taking  over  in  full  the  old  domestic 
domestic  debt.  For  the  most  part,  the  "certifi 
cates"  had  passed  into  the  hands  of  speculators,  at  twelve 
or  fifteen  cents  on  the  dollar;  and,  it  was  argued,  there 
was  neither  necessity  nor  propriety  in  voting  fortunes  out 
of  the  people's  money  to  men  who  had  so  traded  on  their 
country's  needs.  Nine  Congressmen  out  of  ten,  at  their 
election,  had  intended  to  scale  down  this  debt.  Hamil 
ton  maintained  forcefully,  however,  that  only  full  payment 
would  establish  national  credit  or  redeem  the  faith  pledged 
by  the  old  Congress  as  the  price  of  Independence ;  and 
this  view  prevailed.  On  the  other  hand,  the  $200,000,- 
000  of  Continental  currency,  held  mainly  by  the  common 
people  instead  of  by  profiteers,  was  practically  repudiated. 
That  currency  was  much  the  larger  part  of  the  Revolutionary 
debt.  In  view  of  this,  the  talk  of  "redeeming  our  sacred 
faith"  has  a  peculiar  sound.  Hamilton's  plan  is  to  be 
praised  because  it  was  wise,  not  because  it  was  particularly 
honest. 

Even  before  Hamilton's  proposals  were  laid  before  Con 
gress,  his  purpose  leaked  out ;  and  wealthy  men  in  New  York 
and  Philadelphia  hastily  started  agents  in  swift-sailing 
vessels  for  distant  States,  and  on  horseback  for  the  back 
counties,  to  buy  up  certificates  at  the  prevailing  prices, 
before  the  news  should  arrive.  Indeed,  many  believed  that 
Hamilton  himself  was  corruptly  interested  in  this  specula 
tion.  From  this  charge,  happily,  he  can  be  absolutely  ac 
quitted;  but  he  had  been  careless  in  letting  out  official 


310  THE  FEDERALIST  PERIOD,   1788-1800 

secrets  to  less  scrupulous  friends,  and  some  of  his  strongest 
supporters  in  Congress  were  among  these  "  speculators." 

Hamilton  planned  also  for  the  Federal  government  to 
assume  the  war  debts  of  the  States  ($22,000,000) .  This  part 
Assumption  °^  his  scheme  was  long  in  danger.  States  that  had 
of  state  already  paid  their  debts  resented  bitterly  the  pros 
pect  of  now  having  to  help  pay  also  the  debts  of 
other  States ;  and  States-rights  men  denied  the  right  of  Con 
gress  to  assume  debts.  The  measure  was  finally  carried  by  a 
log-rolling  bargain,  —  one  of  several  attempted  by  Hamilton 
for  the  purpose.  Jefferson  was  persuaded  to  get  two 
Virginia  votes  for  "assumption,"  in  return  for  Hamilton's 
promise  of  Northern  votes  to  locate  the  Capital  on  the 
Potomac.  Thus  the  total  debt  of  the  new  nation  was  some 
74  millions  —  or  about  as  much  per  head  as  the  annual 
expenses  of  government  a  century  later.  (Several  arrange 
ments  made  it  really  less  than  this.  Some  of  the  domestic 
debt  was  paid  in  wild  lands.) 

All  this  was  vigorous  financiering.  American  credit  was 
established  at  a  stroke.  Confidence  returned  at  home. 
Money  came  out  of  hiding,  and  we  entered  upon  an  era  of 
business  prosperity.  As  Daniel  Webster  afterward  said, 
Hamilton  "smote  the  rock  of  national  resources,  and  abun 
dant  streams  of  revenue  gushed  forth.  He  touched  the  dead 
corpse  of  national  credit,  and  it  sprang  upon  its  feet." 

But  Hamilton's  work  was  more   than  mere  financiering. 

The  great  Secretary  cared  as  much  for  the  political  results  as 

f°r   the  financial.     He    saw  that   these   measures 

More  than      J  *  •       »    ««i 

financier-  would  be  a  powerful  cement  to  union  by 
sv?  ort'of  arravmg  property  on  the  side  of  the  new  govern- 
property  ment."  Especially  was  this  true  of  assumption. 
interests  jf  that  part  of  the  plan  had  failed,  then  all  holders 
of  State  bonds  would  have  been  inclined  to  oppose 
National  taxation  as  a  hindrance  to  State  taxation  —  whereby 
they  themselves  would  have  had  to  be  paid.  After  "as 
sumption"  carried,  all  such  creditors  were  transformed  into 
ardent  advocates  of  the  new  government  and  of  every  ex 
tension  of  its  powers;  because  the  stronger  it  grew  and 


THE  WHISKY  REBELLION  311 

the  more  it  taxed,  the  safer  their  own  private  fortunes. 
The  commercial  forces  of  the  country  were  consolidated  behind 
the  new  government.  Jefferson  soon  regretted  bitterly  his 
aid  to  this  centralizing  force,  and  complained  that  (just 
back  from  France)  he  had  been  tricked  by  Hamilton. 
"Hamilton's  system,"  said  he,  "flowed  from  principles  ad 
verse  to  liberty,  and  was  calculated  to  undermine  the 
'Republic." 

The  victory  of  "assumption"  made  a  larger  revenue 
necessary.  Another  part  of  Hamilton's  plan  dealt  with 
this  need.  In  accord  with  his  recommendations,  New 
duties  were  increased  slightly  on  goods  imported  toxes 
from  abroad;  and,  in  1791,  Congress  imposed  a  heavy  ex 
cise  on  spirits  distilled  at  home.  In  that  time,  whisky,  a 
universal  drink,  was  manufactured  in  countless  petty  stills 
scattered  over  the  country,  especially  in  the  poorer  western 
countries,  where  the  farmer  could  not  market  his  grain  in 
any  other  way.  A  pack  horse  could  carry  not  more  than 
four  bushels  of  grain ;  but,  reduced  to  the  form  of  whisky, 
he  could  carry  twenty-four  bushels.  Western  Pennsylvania 
is  said  to  have  had  3000  stills. 

These  small  producers  in  the  western  districts  rarely 
saw  much  currency ;  and  they  felt  it  a  cruel  hardship  to 
have  to  pay  the  tax,  particularly  in  advance  of  The  Whisky 
marketing  the  whisky.  The  legislatures  of  North  Rebellion 
Carolina,  Virginia,  Maryland,  and  Pennsylvania  passed 
vehement  resolutions  condemning  the  law;  and  in  four 
western  counties  of  Pennsylvania  the  United  States  officials 
were  driven  out  or  set  at  naught  for  three  years,  —  by 
methods  that  make  a  curious  parody  upon  those  used 
toward  English  officials  in  the  years  before  the  Battle  of 
Lexington.  This  was  the  Whisky  Rebellion,  —  the  first  re 
bellion  against  the  Federal  government.  Finally,  under 
Hamilton's  advice,  Washington  marched  15,000  militia  from 
neighboring  States  into  the  insurgent  counties,  and  obedience 
was  restored.  Two  leaders  were  tried  for  treason  and  con 
demned  to  death,  but  they  were  pardoned  by  Washington. 


312  THE  FEDERALIST  PERIOD,   1788-1800 

The  most  important  result  of  the  whisky  tax  was  not  the 
increased  revenue,  but  the  demonstration  that  the  new 
government  was  able  and  determined  to  enforce  its  laws. 

Hamilton  also  persuaded  Congress  to  incorporate  a 
National  Bank.  The  government  held  part  of  the  stock,  and 
The  first  named  some  of  the  managing  Board.  In  return, 
National  the  Bank  acted  as  the  agent  of  the  government  in 
securing  loans,  and  took  care  of  the  national  funds.' 
There  was  a  central  bank  at  Philadelphia,  with  branches  in 
other  leading  cities.  Critics  soon  pointed  out  a  danger  that 
a  bank  connected  with  the  government  might  exert  tre 
mendous  political  influence  for  the  party  in  power  by  grant 
ing  or  refusing  loans.  But  banking  facilities  had  been 
meager;  and  the  convenience  of  this  institution  bound  the 
commercial  classes  still  more  closely  to  the  new  government. 

The  creation  of  the  Bank  led  to  the  doctrine  of  "implied 
powers"  in  the  Constitution  (page  285).  To  create  a  cor- 
And  poration  is  not  among  the  powers  "enumerated" 

"implied  for  Congress.  Indeed,  efforts  to  include  that 
particular  power  had  been  defeated  in  the  Phila 
delphia  Convention.  Hamilton,  however,  insisted  that  the 
authority  was  given  by  the  "necessary  and  proper"  clause. 
"Necessary,"  he  urged,  meant  only  "suitable";  and  a 
national  bank  would  be  a  suitable  and  convenient  means  to 
carry  out  the  enumerated  powers  of  borrowing  money  and 
caring  for  national  finances.  After  serious  hesitation,  Wash 
ington  signed  the  bill.  He  had  invited  opinions  from  Jeffer 
son  as  well  as  from  Hamilton  (page  305) ;  and  the  debate  be 
tween  the  two  great  Secretaries  began  the  dispute  as  to 
" strict  construction "  arid  "loose"  or  "broad"  construction 
of  the  Constitution. 

III.   NORTH  AND   SOUTH 

From  the  first,  the  serious  contests  under  the  new  government 
were  sectional.  The  conflicts  upon  assumption,  the  tariff,  the 
Sectional  Bank,  had  all  been  conflicts  between  North  and 
disputes  South,  —  commercial  section  and  agricultural  sec 
tion.  This  sectionalism  was  intensified  by  the  slavery  ques- 


NORTH  AND  SOUTH  313 

tion.  In  the  North,  and  as  far  south  as  through  Virginia, 
antislavery  sentiment  was  gradually  growing.  Some  States 
had  abolished  slavery  ;  some  were  making  arrangements  for 
gradual  emancipation  ;  others  had  at  least  forbidden  importa 
tion  of  slaves.  In  the  first  session  of  the  First  Congress,  a 
Virginia  representative  moved  a  national  tax  of  ten  dollars  a 
head  upon  all  slaves  imported  into  any  State.  After  a  bitter 
debate  the  matter  was  dropped.  At  the  next  session,  two 
petitions  were  presented  from  Pennsylvania  (cf.  page  130) 
praying  Congress  to  use  its  "constitutional  powers"  to 
limit  slavery  and  protect  the  Negro.  The  resulting  debate 
was  as  fierce  as  any  in  our  history,  bristling  with  vitu 
peration  and  with  threats  of  secession;  and  the  House 
finally  adopted  resolutions  declaring  that  it  had  no  "con 
stitutional  power"  to  interfere  with  the  treatment  of  slaves, 
or  to  abolish  slavery,  within  any  State.  The  unquestion 
able  fact  that  it  had  power  to  regulate  the  treatment  of 
slaves  on  the  high  seas  and  in  the  Territories  it  chose  not 
to  allude  to. 

The  next  move  came  from  the  South  in  a  demand  for  a 
Fugitive  Slave  Law,  and  in  1793  there  was  passed  a  dis 
graceful  statute.  The  Constitution  sanctioned  The  first 
slavery  and  made  it  the  legal  duty  of  Congress  Fugitive 
to  provide  the  necessary  machinery  for  the  cap-  Slave  law 
ture  and  return  of  fugitive  slaves ;  but  the  law  should  at 
least  have  given  to  any  Negro,  claimed  as  a  slave,  the 
benefit  of  the  doubt,  until  proof  of  the  claim  was  complete. 
The  presumption  should  have  been  in  his  favor.  Such, 
indeed,  was  the  maxim  of  the  Roman  Imperial  law.  But 
this  American  law  followed  rather  the  medieval  maxim 
that  a  masterless  man  must  belong  to  some  master.  It 
was  a  base  surrender  of  human  rights  to  property  rights. 
It  assumed  that  the  claim  of  a  pretended  master  was  good 
unless  disproved  by  evidence.  No  jury  trial  was  provided, 
and  a  free  Negro,  seized  in  a  strange  locality,  might  easily 
find  it  impossible  to  prove  his  freedom,  —  especially  as  the 
law  failed  to  provide  for  summoning  witnesses.  A  crushing 
fine  was  provided  for  any  citizen  aiding  a  Negro  who  might 


314  THE  FEDERALIST  PERIOD,   1788-1800 

prove  to  be  an  escaped  slave.     In  every  detail  the  presump 
tion  of  the  law  was  against  the  Negro.1 

The  reunion  of  the  old  thirteen  States  was  completed  by 
the  ratification  of  the  Constitution  in  North  Carolina  (No- 
Expansion  vember,  1789)  and  in  Rhode  Island  (1790).  Al- 
of  the  most  at  the  same  time  began  the  expansion  of  the 

Union  through  the  admission  of  new  States,  - 
Vermont  in  1791,  and  Kentucky  in  1792.  Toward  the 
close  of  the  Federalist  period,  Tennessee  was  admitted 
(1796) ;  and  in  1802,  early  in  the  following  period,  Ohio 
came  in.  The  admission  of  these  new  States  brought  into 
high  relief  the  dangerous  sectional  division  in  the  Union,  but 
it  also  helped  to  set  in  motion  two  wholesome  forces. 

Of  the  original  thirteen  States,  seven  were  north  of  Mason 
and  Dixon's  line ;  but  some  of  these  were  still  slave  holding 
States,  so  that  the  Slave  and  Free  sections  were  not  unequal. 
The  bills  for  the  admission  of  Kentucky  and  Vermont  were 
passed  within  a  few  days  of  each  other,  in  order  to  main 
tain  the  balance,  —  especially  in  the  Senate,  —  between 
the  forces  for  and  against  slavery. 

Both  Kentucky  and  Vermont  gave  the  franchise  to  all 
White  males  twenty-one  years  of  age.  These  were  the  first 
And  frontier  States  with  "  manhood  franchise."  Tennessee  and 
democracy  Ohio  did  not  go  quite  so  far ;  but  they  also  were 
much  more  democratic  than  the  older  States.  The  admission 
of  Western  States  began  at  once  to  introduce  greater  democ 
racy  into  the  Union. 

1  In  a  more  enlightened  age  the  courts  would  have  held  the  law  unconstitu 
tional.  It  neither  provided  securities  for  the  accused  in  criminal  cases  (if  the 
claim  that  a  Negro  was  an  escaped  slave  constituted  a  criminal  case),  nor  in 
sured  the  jury  trial  guaranteed  by  the  seventh  amendment  in  civil  cases.  But 
law,  after  all,  is  merely  what  the  courts,  sustained  by  public  opinion,  declare  it 
to  be.  This  abominable  statute  was  sustained  by  American  courts;  and,  under 
its  sanction,  gangs  of  kidnapers  could,  and  sometimes  did,  carry  off  free  men  to 
a  horrible  slavery.  After  some  fifty  years  (in  the  famous  Prigg  v.  Pennsylvania 
case)  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  nation  definitely  upheld  the  constitutionality  of 
the  law,  except  as  to  the  provision  requiring  State  officials  to  act  as  Federal  officers 
in  carrying  it  out  (1842).  The  more  active  public  opinion  of  the  forties  took  ad 
vantage  of  this  leak  to  undermine  the  operation  of  the  law.  Then  the  Fugitive 
Slave  Law  of  1850  merely  reenacted  the  old  abuses  with  more  efficient  machinery; 
i.  e.  with  special  Federal  commissioners  to  enforce  them. 


THE  FIRST  NEW  STATES 


315 


The  new  commonwealths  had  never  known  political  ex 
istence  as  sovereign  bodies.  They  were  the  children  of  the 
Union,  created  by  it  and  fostered  by  it ;  and  the  tendency 
to  nationality  was  stronger  within  their  borders  than  within 
the  original  States.  The  most  powerful  single  force  in  our 
history  on  the  side  of  union  has  been  this  addition  of  the 
many  new  States  carved  out  of  the  national  domain. 


PAUL  REVERE'S  ENGRAVING  OF  HARVARD  IN  1770. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

DECLINE    OF   THE   FEDERALISTS 
I.    RISE   OF  POLITICAL  PARTIES 

THE  first  three  years  of  Washington's  administration  saw 
no  political  parties.  The  adoption  of  the  Constitution  ended 
The  eie  ^  fipst  Partv  contest.  The  Federalists  were  left, 
ments  for  almost  without  opposition,  to  organize  the  govern- 
the  rise  of  ment  they  had  established,  and,  within  a  few 
months,  party  lines  were  wiped  out.  It  is  some 
times  said  that  Washington  tried  to  reconcile  the  two  old 
parties  and  so  appointed  to  his  Cabinet  two  leaders  from  the 
Antifederalists,  —  Jefferson  and  Randolph.  This  is  absurd. 
Jefferson  had  criticized  the  Constitution,  —  though  less  se 
verely  than  Hamilton  had,  —  but  he,  too,  had  used  his  in 
fluence  for  its  ratification.  And,  though  Randolph  refused 
to  sign  the  final  draft  of  the  Constitution  at  Philadelphia,  he 
had,  afterward,  in  the  Virginia  convention,  been  one  of  the 
chief  leaders  for  ratification.  The  Cabinet  represented 
merely  the  different  wings  of  the  old  Federalist  party. 

But  elements  were  present  for  new  divisions.  Men  soon 
found  themselves  for  or  against  the  plans  of  the  govern 
ment  according  as  they  favored  (1)  aristocracy  or  democ 
racy,  (2)  commercial  or  agricultural  interests,  (3)  a  strong 
or  a  weak  government,  and  (4)  English  or  French  sym 
pathies. 

And  these  divergent  views  arranged  themselves  in  two  groups. 
The  commercial  interests  wished  a  strong  central  govern- 
Sectionai  ment,  and  favored  England  because  our  commerce 
groupings  was  mainly  with  that  country.1  Likewise,  they  were 
more  impelled  toward  aristocracy — to  which  they  had  always 

1  After  the  Revolution  almost  as  exclusively  as  before,  —  which  suggests  that 
the  English  navigation  acts  had  not  in  great  measure  diverted  colonial  commerce 
from  its  natural  channels. 

316 


RISE  OF  POLITICAL  PARTIES  317 

been  inclined  —  because  aristocratic  England  was  now  the 
champion  of  the  old  order  against  democratic  France,  in  the 
wars  of  the  French  Revolution.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
democratic  portion  of  society  had  its  chief  strength  in  agri 
cultural  districts.  It  kept  its  Revolutionary  hatred  for 
England,  and  was  warmly  attached  to  France,  formerly  our 
ally  and  now  the  European  champion  of  democracy.  And, 
according  to  universal  democratic  feeling  in  that  day,  it 
looked  with  distrust  upon  any  strong  government. 

Unhappily,  the  new  party  lines  were  largely  sectional. 
Commercial  New  England  was  mainly  Federalist ;   the  agri 
cultural  South  was  Republican.     Hamilton  stood  Hamilton 
for  the  aristocratic,  pro-English  tendency ;  Jeffer-  and 
son,  for  the  democratic,  pro-French  view.    Soon  the  Jefferson 
two  were  contending  in  the  Cabinet  (in  Jefferson's  phrase) 
"like  cocks  in  a  pit."     By  1792  both  had  resigned,  and  these 
divergent  views  in  the  country  had  crystallized  into  new 
political  parties.     Jefferson  believed  that  Hamilton's  policy, 
if  not  checked,  would  result  in  monarchy ;  and  he  called  his 
own  party  "Republican."     His  opponents  tried  to  discredit 
it  by  stigmatizing  it  "Democratic,"  and  shrewdly  took  to 
themselves  the  old  name  "Federalist." 

Jefferson   first   uses   the   term   Republican   as   a   party 
name  in  a  letter  to  Washington  in  May,   1792:    "The 
Republican  party  among  us,  who  wish  to  preserve 
the  government  in  its  present  form  .  .   .  '      Years  publican" 
later  he  affirmed  he  had  heard  Hamilton  call  the  Party  of 

1792 

Constitution  "a  shilly-shally  thing,  of  mere  milk 
and  water,  which  .   .   .  was  good  only  as  a  step  to  some 
thing  better"  ;  and  later  still  he  declared,  "The  contests  of 
that  day  were  contests  of  principle  between  the  adherents 
of  republican  and  of  kingly  government." 

But  if  Jefferson  accused  his  opponents  of  plotting  against 
the  Republic,  they,  even  more  absurdly,  accused  him  of 
plotting  to  overthrow  all  society,  in  the  interest  Party 
of  bloody  anarchy  or  at  least  of  a  general  pro-  bitterness 
scription  of  property  (page  335).     It  took  a  generation 


318  THE  FEDERALIST  PERIOD 

for  men  to  learn  that  political  difference  did  not  mean 
moral  viciousness.  Many  years  afterward,  Madison  char 
acterized  the  party  divisions  more  fairly:  "Hamilton 
wished  to  administer  the  government  into  what  he  thought 
it  ought  to  be ;  while  the  Republicans  wished  to  keep  it  as 
understood  by  the  men  who  adopted  it." 

Washington's  patriotism  so  exalted  him  that  the  Repub 
licans  were  unwilling  to  oppose  his  reelection.  In  1793  he 
again  received  every  electoral  vote.  Adams  became  Vice 
President  again,  by  77  votes  to  50  for  George  Clinton.  The 
Republicans  were  sadly  handicapped  in  their  canvass  for 
Clinton  by  their  lack  of  a  candidate  of  their  own  for  the 
presidency ;  but  they  secured  a  strong  majority  in  the  new 
House  of  Representatives. 

Washington  refused  to  be  a  candidate  for  a  third  term. 
Then,  in  1796,  came  a  true  party  contest.  The  Federalist 
"  King  members  of  Congress  in  caucus  nominated  Adams 
Caucus  "  and  Thomas  Pinckney.  Republican  Congressmen 
nominated  Jefferson.  Adams  won  by  three  votes. 
Jefferson  became  Vice  President.1 

These  nominations  in  1796  mark  the  first  use  of  the 
Congressional  caucus  for  nominating  purposes,  —  a  device 
that  was  to  hold  sway  for  the  next  thirty -five  years ;  but 
in  New  England  town  government  the  caucus  was  an  old 
piece  of  political  machinery.  John  Adams  has  left  the  earli 
est  account  of  it  as  it  appeared  in  Boston  (Diary  for  Feb 
ruary,  1773) :  - 

"This  day  I  learned  that  the  caucus  club  meets  at  certain  times 
in  the  garret  of  Tom  Dawes.  .  .  .  He  has  a  large  house,  and  he 
has  a  movable  partition  in  his  garret,  which  he  takes  down,  and 
the  whole  club  meets  in  one  room.  There  they  smoke  tobacco 

1  Before  the  Twelfth  Amendment,  each  elector  voted  for  two  men  without 
naming  one  for  President,  one  for  Vice  President.  If  all  Federalist  electors  had 
voted  for  both  their  candidates,  there  would  have  been  no  choice  for  first  place. 
To  prevent  this  result,  several  Federalist  electors  threw  away  their  second  votes, 
so  that  Pinckney,  on  the  winning  ticket,  received  fewer  votes  than  Jefferson,  on 
the  other.  The  consequence  was  absurd,  —  President  and  Vice  President  from 
hostile  parties. 


RISE  OF  POLITICAL  PARTIES  319 

till  you  cannot  see  from  one  end  of  the  room  to  the  other.  There 
they  drink  flip,  I  suppose,  and  there  they  choose  a  moderator, 
who  puts  questions  to  vote  regularly ;  and  selectmen,  assessors, 
collectors,  firewards,  and  representatives  are  regularly  chosen 
before  they  are  chosen  by  the  town."  (It  was  his  control  over 
this  caucus  which  made  Samuel  Adams  for  so  long  the  "boss"  of 
Boston.) 

By  1790,  it  had  become  customary  in  State  legislatures  for 
members  of  each  party  to  "caucus"  in  order  to  nominate 
party  candidates  for  State  offices,  and  the  device  was  now 
seized  upon  by  the  parties  in  Congress  for  national  party 
nominations.  Of  course  it  destroyed  at  once  and  com 
pletely  the  intention  of  the  Constitution  that  the  chosen 
electors  should  "deliberate"  and  make  their  own  choice, 
and  so  "refine  the  popular  will."  It  remained  now  only 
for  them  to  follow  the  "recommendation"  of  the  party 
caucus.  This  illustrates  the  fact  that  party  government 
was  a  new  thing.  The  men  who  made  the  Consti-  Part 
tution  did  not  foresee  it.  Those  who  dreamed  of  govern- 
it  at  all  thought  of  it  only  as  a  dreaded  possibility.  ment  new 
The  Constitution  made  no  provision  for  the  chief  force  which 
was  to  run  it.  But  almost  at  once,  for  most  useful  purposes, 
the  check  of  mutually  balancing  parties  replaced  the  elaborate 
system  of  Constitutional  checks  devised  by  the  Philadelphia 
Convention. 

Said  John  Adams,  in  October,  1792:  "There  is  nothing 
which  I  dread  so  much  as  the  division  of  the  Republic  into 
two  great  parties,  each  under  its  leader.  .  .  .  This,  in  my 
humble  apprehension,  is  to  be  feared  as  the  greatest  politi 
cal  evil  under  our  Constitution."  Soon,  however,  all  free 
peoples  were  to  adopt  the  device  as  the  only  workable  plan, 
so  far  invented,  for  self-government.  This  need  not  blind 
us  to  its  imperfections.  Government  by  party  Natureof 
seems  to  be  most  wholesome  when  party  lines  cor-*  party 
respond  in  fair  degree  to  the  natural  differences  8°vernment 
between  conservatives  and  progressives.  One  part  of  society 
sees  most  clearly  the  present  good  and  the  possible  dangers  in 


320  THE  FEDERALIST  PERIOD 

change,  and  feels  that  to  maintain  existing  advantages  is  more 
important  than  to  try  for  new  ones.  Another  part  sees  most 
clearly  the  existing  evils  and  the  possible  gain  in  change,  and 
feels  that  to  try  to  improve  conditions,  even  at  the  risk  of  ex 
periment,  is  more  important  than  merely  to  preserve  existing 
good.  Each  party  draws  its  strength  from  some  of  the  noblest 
and  some  of  the  basest  of  human  qualities.  The  true  reformer 
will  find  himself  associated  with  reckless  adventurers  and 
self-seeking  demagogues.  The  thoughtful  conservative, 
struggling  to  preserve  society  from  harmful  revolution,  will 
find  much  of  his  support  in  the  inertia,  selfishness,  and 
stupidity  of  comfortable  respectability,  and  in  the  greed  of 
"special  privilege."  "Stupidity  is  naturally  Tory";  and 
"Folly  is  naturally  Liberal."  Over  against  this  handicap 
stands  one  mighty  advantage.  One  of  the  marks  of  true 
party  government  is  moderation,  because  the  shifting  of  only 
a  small  fraction  of  the  total  vote  will  usually  displace  the 
ruling  party. 

II.    FOREIGN   RELATIONS,    1793-1800 

The  French  Revolution  began  one  week  after  Washington 
became  President,  if  it  be  dated  in  the  usual  way  from  the 
Foreign  gathering  of  the  States  General.  That  tremendous 
troubles  movement  soon  involved  all  Europe  in  war ;  and 
the  new-born  American  nation  had  only  four  years  of  quiet,  to 
arrange  its  pressing  affairs,  before  it  was  drawn  into  serious 
foreign  complications.  Those  complications  absorbed  much 
American  energy,  and  vitally  affected  American  develop 
ment  for  twentyrfive  years,  and  they  were  of  particular 
interest  during  this  Federalist  period. 

At  first  popular  sympathy  went  out  enthusiastically  to  the 
French  Republic  in  its  desperate  struggle  against  the  "coalized 

1  These  lines  are  condensed  roughly  from  a  much  longer  passage  in  Lecky's 
England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century  (I,  513-515).  Colonel  Higginson  had  the  final 
quotation  in  mind  probably,  when  he  wrote  of  these  first  American  political  parties, 
"Some  men  became  Federalists  because  they  were  high-minded;  and  some  because 
they  were  narrow-minded ;  while  the  more  far-sighted  and  also  the  less  scrupulous 
became  Republicans." 


RELATIONS  WITH  FRANCE,  1792-1795 

despots"  of  Europe.     From  one  end  of  America  to  the  other, 
there  burst  forth  a  fine  frenzy  for  "Democratic  clubs"  and 
other    imitations    of    new   French   customs  ;    and  Democratic 
loud    demands   were   voiced    that    we    return   to  sympathy 
France,  in  her  need,  the  aid  we  had  received  from 
her  in  our  own  Revolution.     Washington  steadfastly  with 
stood  this  popular  movement.     On  receiving  news  of  war 
between  France  and  England,  in  the  spring  of  1793,  washmg- 


he  called  the  first  Cabinet  meeting  (page  305),  and,  *p£s 

..i.i  •  i     &e    fi  i      j  i         j  Neutrality 

with  the  unanimous  approval  ot  that  body,  de-  Prociama- 
cided  upon  his  famous  "Neutrality  Proclamation"  tion" 

The  President  had  no  authority  to  fix  the  policy  of  the 
nation.  That  belongs  to  Congress.  Accordingly,  the  proc 
lamation  did  not  say  that  the  United  States  would  re 
main  neutral.  It  did  call  the  attention  of  our  citizens 
to  their  duties  while  we  were  neutral,  and  it  dwelt  effec 
tively  upon  the  advantages  of  neutrality.  It  was  really 
an  impressive  argument  for  that  policy.  For  the  moment, 
its  chief  result  seemed  to  be  a  storm  of  violent  abuse  at 
Washington. 

The  new  French  minister,  "Citizen"  Genet,  tried  to  use 
our  ports  for  French  privateers  as  if  America  had  been  an 
ally  of  France  in  the  war  ;   and,  in  such  attempts  "  citizen  " 
to  embroil  us  with  England,  he  had  much  popu-  Gengt 
lar  sympathy.     Soon,  however,  Genet  overreached  himself. 
When  checked  by  our  government  in  his  efforts  to  disregard 
our  neutrality,  he  threatened  to  appeal  from  the  government 
to  the  people.    Washington  promptly  demanded  that  France 
recall  its  minister,  and  the  people  generally  supported  this 
defense  of  American  dignity. 

Then  public  opinion  began  overwhelmingly  to  approve 
Washington's  stately  recommendation  for  neutrality  in  the 
great  proclamation.  That  policy  was  established,  by  the 
informal  mandate  of  the  nation,  and  America  was  started  upon 
a  century-long  period  of  separation  from  Old-World  quarrels. 
In  Washington's  day  such  separation  was  especially  whole 
some,  because  we  could  then  enter  European  politics  only 
as  tail  to  the  French  or  English  kite. 


322  THE  FEDERALIST  PERIOD 

Our  troubles  with  England  concerned  the  unfulfilled 
treaty  of  1763  (page  235),  our  wish  to  trade  with  the  British 
Relations  West  Indies  —  from  which  England's  navigation 
with  acts  now  shut  us  out  —  and  conflicting  views  of 

international  law  as  to  rights  of  neutral  trade  dur 
ing  the  European  war.  The  first  two  points  were  of  merely 
temporary  interest.  Some  things  about  the  third  matter  are 
still  vital. 

The  English  navy  was  trying  to  conquer  France  by  shut 
ting  off  foreign  commerce.  England  looked  upon  our  trade 
with  France  as  an  aid  to  the  military  resistance  of  that 
power.  We  regarded  England's  restrictions  upon  that  trade 
as  interference  with  neutral  rights.  Three  of  the  points 
in  dispute  called  for  special  notice. 

1.  France   began    (May,    1793)    seizing   American   ships 
bound   to   England   with   foodstuffs,   on   the   ground    that 
"Contra-      such  cargo  was  "contraband."     England  was  soon 
band  "          absolute  mistress  of  the  seas,  and  she  gladly  followed 
this  example.     She  offered  payment  to  the  American  owners, 
it  is  true,  for  the  food  she  seized ;    but  we  held  that  only 
military  supplies  were  contraband.1 

2.  England  captured  neutral  vessels  bound  even  to  an 
unblockaded  port,  if  they  carried  goods  belonging  to  citizens 
"  Free  of  a  country  with  which  she  was  at  war.     America 
ships"          claimed,  "Free  ships  make  free  goods." 

3.  More  serious,  to  our  eyes  to-day,  was  the  seizure  of 
American  seamen,  —  though  at  the  time  it  awoke  far  less 
impress-       protest  than  the  seizure  of  property.     England  had 
ment  always  recruited  sailors  for  her  men-of-war  by  the 
press  gang ;  and  —  so  essential  was  the  war  navy  —  English 

1  The  Russian-Japanese  War  and  still  more  the  World  War  prove  that  this  is 
still  a  vexed  question.     Food  or  clothing  for  an  army,  or  for  a  besieged  town,  has 
always  come  under  the  head  of  military  supplies.     These  recent  wars  show  that 
whole  provinces,  and  whole  countries,  may  be  "besieged,"  and  that  almost  any 
sort  of  goods  may  become  "military  supplies." 

2  This  maxim  had  been  set  up  by  Holland  in  1650,  and  agreed  to  by  northern 
European  nations  in  1780,  except  for  England's  opposition.     War  on  land  has 
long  recognized,  in  considerable  degree,  that  private  property  should  be  taken 


RELATIONS  WITH  ENGLAND  323 

courts  had  always  refused  to  interfere.  Great  numbers  of 
British  seamen  had  recently  deserted  to  American  merchant 
ships  to  get  better  wages  and  better  treatment  there.  These 
deserters  were  often  protected  by  fraudulent  papers  of  "citi 
zenship,"  easily  secured  in  American  ports.  English  vessels 
claimed  the  right  to  search  American  ships  and  to  take  back 
such  sailors.  Soon  the  practice  was  extended  to  the  impress 
ment  of  other  British  subjects  found  there,  and  even  to  those 
who  had  been  legally  "naturalized"  by  American  law.1 
Worse  still,  in  irritation  at  the  American  encouragement  to 
their  deserters,  English  officers  sometimes  impressed  born 
Americans,  either  by  mistake  or  by  set  purpose. 

Of  course  the  "  right  of  search  "  exists.  In  time  of  war, 
a  war  vessel  of  a  belligerent  may  stop  and  search  a  neutral 
trading  vessel  to  find  out  (1)  whether  it  really  is  a  neu 
tral  vessel  as  its  flag  proclaims ;  (2)  whether  it  is  bound 
for  any  blockaded  port;  (3)  whether  it  carries  "contra 
band."  If  "strong  presumption"  is  found  against  the 
vessel  on  any  of  these  points,  it  may  be  carried  to  a 
"prize  court"  for  trial;  and  if  there  adjudged  guilty, 
it  becomes  "lawful  prize."  But  no  "right  of  search" 
applies  to  seizing  people;  and  the  "right"  must  always 
be  exercised  with  discretion  and  without  unduly  em 
barrassing  neutral  trade. 

All  England's  invasions  of  neutral  rights  were  attempted 
by  other  European  belligerents,  also ;  but  England's  navy 
was  the  only  one  able  to  injure  us  seriously.  As  scores  of 
American  vessels  with  valuable  cargoes  were  swept  into 
British  prize  courts,  American  feeling  rose  to  war  heat. 
In  the  spring  of  1794  Congress  laid  a  temporary  embargo 
upon  all  American  shipping  (that  it  might  not  be  caught  at 
sea,  without  warning,  by  the  expected  war),  and  threatened 

by  a  hostile  army  only  as  a  necessary  war  measure,  not  merely  for  plunder.  At 
sea,  this  civilizing  doctrine  has  made  slower  progress,  and  piratical  customs  have 
continued. 

1  England  denied  the  right  of  an  Englishman  to  change  his  allegiance :  "  Once 
an  Englishman,  always  an  Englishman."  The  American  contention  of  a  man's 
right  to  change  his  citizenship  by  "naturalization"  has  prevailed. 


324  THE  FEDERALIST  PERIOD 

to  seize  all  moneys  in  America  due  British  creditors,  to  off 
set  British  seizures  of  American  ships.  This  would  have 
meant  war. 

That  disaster  was  averted  only  by  the  calm  resolution  of 
Washington.  He  appointed  John  Jay  special  envoy  to 
The  jay  negotiate  with  England  ;  and  in  November,  1794, 
Treaty  "Jay's  Treaty"  was  ready  for  ratification.  By  its 

terms,  impressment  was  not  mentioned  or  blockade  defined. 
England  had  her  way,  too,  as  to  contraband  and  neutral  ships  ; 
but  she  agreed  to  vacate  the  Northwest  posts,  to  open  to 
American  trade  her  West  India  ports  under  certain  restric 
tions,  and  to  pay  American  citizens  for  recent  seizures  of  ships 
and  goods.  The  American  government  dropped  the  claim 
for  compensation  for  the  deported  Negroes,  and  promised 
to  pay  the  British  creditors  who  had  not  been  able  to  collect 
pre-Revolutionary  debts. 

England  offered  to  open  the  West  India  ports  to 
American  trade,  but  only  to  small  coasting  vessels,  and 
upon  condition  that  America  promise  for  twelve  years 
not  to  export  to  any  part  of  the  world  molasses,  sugar, 
coffee,  cocoa,  or  cotton.  The  English  intention,  prob 
ably,  was  simply  to  maintain  her  navigation  system 
with  regard  to  other  countries,  by  making  sure  that 
American  vessels,  admitted  to  the  Island  ports,  should 
not  carry  the  products  of  those  colonies  to  other  parts 
of  the  world  as  well  as  to  the  United  States,  and  that 
such  products,  after  being  brought  to  the  United  States, 
should  not  be  reexported.  Jay  seems  to  have  been 
ignorant  that  these  restrictions  (even  that  one  regarding  cotton) 
would  hamper  American  commerce.  The  twelfth  article 
of  the  treaty,  containing  this  trade  provision,  was  cut 
out  by  the  Senate. 

It  took  all  Washington's  influence  to  get  the  treaty  rati 
fied.  Excitement  was  intense.  Jay  was  burned  in  effigy. 
Hamilton  was  stoned  from  a  public  platform  where  he  ad 
vocated  ratification.  Washington  himself  once  more  was 
heaped  with  vituperation.  The  Virginia  legislature  voted 


THE  JAY  TREATY  OF   1794  325 

down  a  resolution  expressing  trust  in  her  greatest  son,  and 
the  national  House  of  Representatives  struck  out  the  cus 
tomary  words  " undiminished  confidence"  from  an  address  to 
him. 

The  treaty  certainly  left  much  to  be  desired ;  but  at 
worst  it  was  well  worth  while.  America  secured  undisputed 
possession  of  her  full  territory  and  satisfaction  for  commer 
cial  injuries.  For  other  matters,  we  gained  what  we  needed 
most  —  time.  To  our  new  and  unprepared  nation,  war 
at  that  moment  would  have  been  ruin.  The  treaty  per 
mitted  an  honorable  escape.  Moreover,  in  one  respect  it 
was  a  distinct  step  onward  for  civilization.  It  provided  for 
the  first  instance  of  international  arbitration  in  the  modern 
sense. 

The  treaty  of  1783  had  named  the  St.  Croix  River  as  the 
boundary  of  Maine  from  the  sea  to  the  highlands.  But  that 
unexplored  region  contained  several  rivers  bearing  Inter_ 
the  name.  The  treaty-map,  with  its  red-ink  draw-  national 
ings,  had  been  lost.  And  several  thousand  square  arbltratl( 
miles  of  territory  had  fallen  into  honest  dispute.  This  treaty 
of  1794  submitted  the  matter  to  adjudication  by  a  commission 
(two  men  chosen  by  each  power,  they  to  have  authority  to 
choose  a  fifth).  Each  nation  pledged  itself  in  advance  to 
abide  by  the  award.  The  commission  was  to  act  as  an  inter 
national  court,  with  somewhat  of  judicial  procedure.  It  was 
not  to  be  merely  a  meeting  of  diplomats,  to  make  a  bargain 
or  to  seek  out  a  compromise.  It  was  to  examine  evidence 
and  hear  argument,  and  was  sworn  to  do  justice  according 
to  the  real  merits  of  the  case,  as  an  ordinary  court  decides 
title  to  property  between  private  claimants. 

This  rational  agreement  called  forth  violent  outcry.  In 
England,  the  ministry  were  assailed  for  "basely  sacrificing 
British  honor"  ;  and,  on  this  side  the  water,  there  was  much 
senseless  clamor  about  "not  surrendering  American  soil 
without  first  fighting  to  the  last  drop  of  our  blood."  To 
such  silly,  question-begging  pretense  of  patriotism,  Ham 
ilton's  reply  was  unanswerable:  "It  would  be  a  horrid  and 
destructive  principle  that  nations  could  not  terminate  a 


326  THE  FEDERALIST  PERIOD 

dispute  about  a  parcel  of  territory  by  peaceful  arbitration, 
but  only  by  war." 

France  had  confidently  expected  these  troubles  to  lead 
us  into  war  with  England,  and  she  was  bitterly  angered 
New  at  the  Jay  Treaty.  Her  government,  in  a  violent 

troubles  protest,  charged  the  United  States  with  weakness 
and  bad  faith,  and  insultingly  refused  to  receive 
Pinckney,  who  had  been  appointed  our  minister  at  Paris. 
Soon  she  withdrew  her  minister  from  America,  and,  to 
the  full  extent  of  her  power,  began  aggressions  upon  our 
commerce. 

The  administration  of  John  Adams  (1797-1801)  found 
things  at  this  pass ;  and  it  was  occupied  almost  wholly  by 
this  peril  and  by  the  disputes  at  home  growing  out  of 
it.  The  President  sent  Gerry,  Pinckney,  and  John  Mar 
shall  to  France  to  negotiate  a  settlement.  The  new  French 
government  (the  Directory)  first  ignored  these  gentlemen, 
and  then,  through  secret  agents,  tried  to  intimidate  them  and 
to  demand  tribute  in  money  for  private  graft. 

The  publication  of  this  infamous  "X.  Y.  Z."1  matter 
silenced  the  friends  of  France  in  America  and  fanned  popular 
"x  Y  z "  ^  indignation  to  white  heat.  Pinckney 's  famous 
phrase,  "Millions  for  defense,  but  not  a  cent  for 
tribute,"  became  the  grim  byword  of  the  hour.  Even  the 
Southern  States  elected  Federalist  congressmen ;  and,  in 
1798,  the  Federalists  once  more  gained  possession  for  a 
moment  of  all  branches  of  the  government. 

In  the  summer  of  1798,  preparations  for  war  with  France 
were  hastened.  Warships  were  built,  and  the  army  was  reor- 
Prepara-  ganized,  with  Washington  as  commander  in  chief 
tions  for  and  Hamilton  as  his  second  in  command.  War 
was  not  formally  declared,  but  it  did  exist  in  fact. 
Scores  of  ships  were  commissioned  as  privateers,  to  prey  upon 
French  merchantmen  ;  and  the  United  States  frigate  Con 
stellation  fought  and  captured  the  French  Vengeance. 

1  When  Adams  made  public  the  dispatches  of  the  American  ministers,  the  names 
of  the  French  negotiators  were  replaced  by  these  initials. 


FRIES'  REBELLION  327 

At  this  moment,  in  a  roundabout  way,  the  French  gov 
ernment  hinted  that  it  would  be  glad  to  renew  negotiations. 
Adams  had  won  great  applause  by  a  declaration,  Adams 
"  I  will  never  send  another  minister  to  France  with-  "  keeps  us 
out  assurance  that  he  will  be  received,  respected,  out  of  war 
and  honored  as  becomes  the  representative  of  a  great,  free, 
powerful,  and  independent  nation."  But  now  patriotically 
he  threw  away  his  popularity  and  the  chance  predomi 
nance  of  his  party,  in  order  to  save  the  country  from  war. 
Without  even  the  knowledge  of  his  Cabinet,  he  appointed 
another  embassy ;  and  the  treaty  of  1800  secured  our  trade, 
for  the  time,  from  further  French  aggression.  Adams'  cour 
age  in  this  matter  is  perhaps  his  highest  claim  to  grateful 
remembrance.  He  himself  proposed  for  his  epitaph,  "Here 
lies  John  Adams,  who  took  upon  himself  the  responsibility 
for  the  peace  with  France  in  1800." 

Midway  in  the  turmoil  with  France  and  England,  we 
nearly  came  to  blows  with  another  power.     The  origin  of 
our  disputes  with  Spain  has  been  treated  in  earlier 
chapters.     In    1795,    after    vigorous    negotiation  Pmckney 
backed  at   last  by   threat  of  war,  the  Pinckney  Tyeaty 
Treaty  secured  a  fairly  satisfactory  adjustment  — 
on  paper.     Spain  bound,  herself  to  restrain  Indian  raids  from 
her  territory,  promised  "right  of  deposit"    (page   247)  at 
New  Orleans,  and  paid  for  previous  seizures  there. 

III.    DOMESTIC   TROUBLES,    1797-1800 

The  preparation  for  war,  at  the  opening  of  Adams'  ad 
ministration,  made  more  revenue  necessary.  Congress 
raised  the  tariff  rates,  passed  a  Stamp  Act,  and  apportioned 
a  "direct  tax"  of  $2,000,000  among  the  States. 

This  last  measure  resulted  in  Fries'  Rebellion.     In  assess 
ing  the  new  tax,  houses  were  valued  according  to  their  size 
and  the  number  of  their  windows.     Officers  were  Fries' 
frequently  resisted  in  their  attempts  to  measure  Rebellion 
houses,  and  slops  were  sometimes  poured  upon  their  heads 
from  the  windows.     In  Pennsylvania  a  number  of  the  rioters 


328  JOHN  ADAMS'  ADMINISTRATION 

were  arrested.  They  were  promptly  rescued  by  armed  men 
led  by  a  certain  Fries.  Adams  thought  it  necessary  to  call 
out  an  army  to  repress  the  "insurrection."  Fries  was  con 
demned  to  be  hung  for  treason,  but  was  pardoned  by  the 
President,  —  to  the  indignation  of  leading  Federalists,  who 
clamored  for  an  "example,"  as  Adams  himself  had  done 
when  Washington  pardoned  the  leaders  of  the  Whisky 
Rebellion. 

Political  controversy  had  grown  excessively  bitter.  Re 
publican  editors  poured  forth  upon  the  President  and  his 
administration  abuse  which  in  our  better-mannered  era 
would  be  regarded  as  blackguardism.  The  Federalists 
retorted  with  language  equally  foul,  and  tried  to  gag  their 
opponents  with  the  notorious  "alien  and  sedition"  laws,— 
repressive,  tyrannical,  dangerous  to  the  spirit  of  free  in 
stitutions. 

Aliens  had  been  required  to  live  in  the  United  States  five 
years  before  they  could  be  naturalized :  a  new  Naturaliza- 
The  Alien  ^on  Act  raised  this  period  to  fourteen  years.  An 
and  Sedition  Alien  law  authorized  the  President,  without  trial, 
to  order  out  of  the  country  "any  aliens  he  shall 
judge  dangerous  to  the  peace  and  safety  of  the  United 
States,"  and,  if  they  remained,  to  imprison  them  "so  long 
as,  in  the  opinion  of  the  President,  the  public  safety  may  re 
quire."  The  Sedition  law  provided  fine  and  imprisonment 
for  "combining"  to  oppose  measures  of  the  government,  and 
for  "any  false,  scandalous,  or  malicious  writing  against  the 
government"  or  against  its  high  officials,  "  with  intent  to  bring 
them  into  disrepute." 

Seditious  utterance  and  slander  were  already  punishable 
in  State  courts,  under  the  Common  Law.  But,  since  the 
Zenger  trial,  prosecutions  of  this  sort  for  political  utterances 
had  become  obsolete  in  America.  The  people,  with  sound 
instinct,  had  preferred  to  endure  some  bad  manners,  rather 
than  to  imperil  liberty.  This  reenactment  of  obsolete 
practice  by  a  National  law,  to  be  enforced  in  the  govern 
ment's  own  courts,  conflicted,  in  spirit  at  least,  with  the  First 
amendment.  Says  Francis  A.  Walker:  "The  blunder  of 


VIRGINIA  AND  KENTUCKY  RESOLUTIONS          329 

the  Federalists  was  not  accidental.  ...  It  was  thoroughly 
characteristic.  It  sprang  out  of  a  distrust  of  the  masses; 
a  belief  that  the  people  must  always  be  repressed  or  led ; 
...  a  readiness  to  use  force ;  —  all  of  which  were  of  the 
essence  of  the  aristocratic  politics  of  the  last  quarter  of 
the  eighteenth  century." 

President  Adams  took  no  part  in  securing  these  laws ;  and 
he  made  no  use  of  the  Alien  Act.  But  Federalist  judges 
showed  a  sinister  disposition  to  stifle  criticism  of  Federalist 
their  political  party  by  securing  convictions  under  "^o^ance 
the  Sedition  law.  Matthew  Lyon,  a  Vermont  editor,  charged 
Adams  with  "unbounded  thirst  for  ridiculous  pomp  and  for 
foolish  adulation"  and  with  "selfish  avarice."  For  these 
words,  he  was  punished  by  imprisonment  for  four  months  and 
by  a  fine  of  $1000.  Nine  other  convictions  followed  in  the 
few  months  remaining  of  Federalist  rule,  and  like  cases  oc 
curred  in  State  courts  under  Federalist  control.  One  grand 
jury  indicted  a  man  for  circulating  a  petition  for  the  repeal 
of  the  Sedition  law ! 

In  great  excitement,  Jefferson  wrote  to  George  Mason 
(Works,  Washington  ed.,  IV,  257)  :  "I  consider  those  laws 
only  an  experiment  on  the  American  mind  to  see  And  Re- 
how  far  it  will  bear  an  avowed  violation  of  the  Publica? 
Constitution.  If  this  goes  down,  we  shall  see  Of  Nuiiifica- 
attempted  another  act  of  Congress  declaring  that  tion 
the  President  shall  continue  in  office  during  life,  reserving 
to  another  occasion  the  transfer  of  the  succession  to  his  heirs 
and  the  establishment  of  the  Senate  for  life.  That  these 
things  are  in  contemplation,  I  have  no  doubt."  For  pro 
tection  the  Republicans  turned  to  the  State  governments. 
The  Federalists,  drunk  with  power,  had  threatened  tyranny  : 
the  Republicans,  in  panic,  sought  refuge  in  the  doctrine  of 
State  sovereignty.  Multitudes  of  popular  meetings  de 
nounced  the  Alien  and  Sedition  laws;  and  the  Republican 
legislatures  of  Virginia  and  Kentucky  suggested  Nullifica 
tion  as  a  remedy,  though  with  no  clear  statements  as  to 
how  that  remedy  should  be  applied.  Jefferson  wrote  the 
first  draft  of  the  resolutions  for  Kentucky ;  Madison,  for 


330  JOHN  ADAMS'  ADMINISTRATION 

Virginia,  in  somewhat  gentler  form.  Indeed  the  first  set 
of  Kentucky  Resolutions,  in  1798,  did  not  contain  the  word 
Nullification,  though  it  was  used  in  debate,  but  it  appeared 
explicitly  in  a  second  set,  in  1799.  The  leaders  seem,  how 
ever,  to  have  had  in  mind  only  a  suspension  of  the  law 
pending  a  referendum  to  the  States. 

The  war  frenzy  of  1798-1799  had  momentarily  put  the 
Federalists  in  control  of  most  of  the  State  legislatures. 
This  explains  why  the  Southern  States  in  general  made  no 
response  to  the  Virginia  and  Kentucky  appeals.  Several 
Northern  legislatures  condemned  those  Resolutions  severely, 
-denying  the  Kentucky  doctrine  that  there  was  "no 
common  judge"  between  a  State  and  the  Union,  and  affirm 
ing  that  the  Supreme  Court  filled  that  position.  But 
in  that  day,  the  Kentucky  doctrine  that  there  was 
"no  common  judge"  was  not  surprising.  The  Supreme 
Court  itself  had  not  yet  used  the  power  to  pass  upon  the 
constitutionality  of  the  Acts  of  Congress.  It  had  not  even 
claimed  that  right,  and  was  not  to  do  so  for  some  more  years ; 
and  a  few  years  later  the  New  England  States,  that  now 
asserted  its  power,  denied  it  fiercely  —  in  the  precise  words 
of  the  Kentucky  Resolutions  (page  388  ff.). 

It  is  well,  however,  at  this  stage,  to  point  out  that  nullifica 
tion,  whether  of  Jefferson's  brand  in  1798,  or  New  England's 
in  1814,  or  Calhoun's  in  1830,  was  absurd  in  logic  and  would 
have  been  anarchic  in  practice.  Any  group  of  citizens  or 
of  States  which  feels  itself  sufficiently  oppressed,  has  the 
natural  right  to  rebel,  and  to  change  the  government  by 
revolution,  if  it  can,  —  as  America  did  in  1776.  The  right 
of  revolution  is  the  fundamental  guarantee  for  liberty  in 
organized  society.  The  question  regarding  it  is  never  one 
of  abstract  right  but  always  of  concrete  righteousness  under 
given  conditions.  In  result,  too,  revolution  means  either 
that  the  government  will  be  confirmed,  or  that  another 
government  will  be  substituted  for  it.  But  nullification 
meant  a  constitutional  right  to  reduce  the  government  to  a 
shadow  while  claiming  its  protection. 


EXPIRING  FEDERALISM  331 

IV.    EXPIRING   FEDERALISM 

The  Federalist  leaders  had  fallen  into  foolish  blunders 
(like  the  house  tax)  because  they  did  not  understand  popular 
feeling ;  and  they  had  attempted  reactionary  and  , 

5-  /i-i        .1       a    j-j.-          A    A\   u  Federalism 

despotic  measures  (like  the  Sedition  Act)  because  Out  of  touch 
they  did  not  believe  in  popular  government.  They  wit^  Ameri- 
were  out  of  touch  with  the  most  wholesome  tend 
ency  of  the  times.  The  brief  reactionary  movement  of 
1783-1793  was  dying,  and  the  people  had  resumed  their 
march  toward  democracy.  Patriotism  had  temporarily 
rallied  the  nation  to  the  support  of  the  Federalist  adminis 
tration  when  that  administration  had  been  insulted  by  the 
arrogant  French  Directory ;  but  with  the  passing  of  that 
foreign  danger,  passed  also  the  chance  of  further  Federalist 
rule. 

For  the  election  in  1800,  the  Federalists  tried  to  bolster 
their  cause  by  inducing  Washington  to  be  a  candidate  once 
more.  Weary  and  discouraged,  Washington  re-  The  election 
fused,  affirming  that  his  candidacy  would  not  draw  of  180° 
a  vote  from  the  anti-Federalists.  This  refusal,  followed  by 
Washington's  sudden  death,  threw  the  Federalists  back  upon 
Adams,  whose  old  Revolutionary  popularity  made  him  still 
their  most  available  man.  The  Republican  candidates  were 
Jefferson  and  Burr  (the  latter  a  sharp  New  York  politician) . 

Lacking  true  majorities  the  Federalists  strove  to  manufac 
ture  false  ones.     The  electoral  vote  finally  stood  only  73  to  65 
against  them  ;   but  20  of  their  65  electors  they  got  Federalist 
by  disreputable  trickery,  against  the  will  of  the  sharp 
people.     Of  several  instances,  only  one  can  be  told  pra 
here.    In  Pennsylvania  the  new  House  of  Representatives  was 
strongly  Republican  ;   but  hold-over  members,  from  the  war- 
election,  kept  the  Senate  Federalist.1     So  far,  that  State  had 
always  chosen  its  electors  by  popular  vote.     This  time  the 
Senate  would  not  agree  to  the  necessary  law   (since  that 
method  would  give  most  of  the  districts  to  the  Republicans) . 

1  In  a  new  constitution,  in  1790,  Pennsylvania  had  exchanged  its  one-House 
legislature  for  the  prevalent  two-chambered  system. 


332  EXPIRING  FEDERALISM 

There  being  no  law  on  the  matter,  it  was  then  necessary  for 
the  legislature  itself  to  choose  electors.  All  elections  by  that 
body  had  been  by  joint  ballot,  but  the  Senate  now  insisted 
upon  a  concurrent  vote.  It  finally  compromised  upon  a 
scheme  which  allowed  it  to  name  seven  of  the  fifteen  elec 
tors.  This  shabby  trick — a  deliberate  violation  of  a  popular 
mandate  —  was  loudly  applauded  by  the  Federalists  as 
lofty  patriotism.  The  Philadelphia  United  States  Gazette 
said  of  the  Federalist  Senators  :  "  [They]  deserve  the  praises 
and  blessings  of  all  America.  They  have  checked  the  mad 
enthusiasm  of  a  deluded  populace.  .  .  .  They  have  saved 
a  falling  world." 

When  it  was  plain  that  the  people  had  turned  the  Federal 
ists  out  of  all  the  elective  branches  of  the  government, 
the  expiring  and  repudiated  Congress  and  President  used 
the  few  days  left  them  unscrupulously  to  entrench  their 
party  in  the  appointive  Judiciary,-  "that  part  of  the 
government  upon  which  all  the  rest  hinges." 

The  infamous  Judiciary  Act  of  1801  had  three  main  parts. 
(1)  To  lessen  Jefferson's  chances  of  making  appointments  to 
The  the  Supreme  Court  it  provided  that  the  first  va- 

juditiary  cancy  should  not  be  filled,  but  that  the  number 
of  Justices  should  at  that  future  time  be  reduced 
by  one.  (2)  Circuit  courts  were  created,  with  a  distinct 
body  of  judges,  and  the  number  of  circuits  was  increased 
to  six,  with  three  judges  for  each  except  the  last.  This  made 
places  for  sixteen  new  judges,  to  be  immediately  appointed 
by  Adams  in  the  remaining  nineteen  days  of  his  administra 
tion.  (3)  The  number  of  District  courts  was  increased 
from  thirteen  to  twenty-three,  making  places  for  eight  more 
such  appointments.  In  addition,  of  course,  there  were 
clerks  and  marshals  to  be  named  for  all  these  new  courts. 

The  law  of  1789  had  created  three  circuits,  but  had 
arranged  for  courts  consisting  of  Justices  of  the  Supreme 
Court  "on  circuit,"  aided  by  some  District  judge.  The 
Federalists  justified  the  new  bill  flimsily  by  urging  the  need 
of  the  separate  Circuit  courts  to  protect  the  "overworked" 


"MIDNIGHT  JUDGES"  333 

Supreme  Court  Justices.  But,  in  plain  fact,  the  Supreme 
Court  had  never  been  overworked.  It  had  then  only  ten 
cases  before  it,  and,  in  the  preceding  ten  years  of  its  life, 
it  had  had  fewer  cases  than  are  customary  in  one  year  now. 
The  weakness  of  the  Federalist  argument  appears  in  the  fact 
that  the  bill  was  repealed  at  once  (page  358)  and  the  old  order 
restored  and  maintained  seventy  years  longer. 

Adams  was  not  able  to  make  his  last  appointments  under 
the  new  law  until  late  on  the  last  evening  of  his  term  of 
office ;  and  the  judges  so  appointed  have  gone  in  The  „  Mid_ 
history  by  the  name  of  "the  Midnight  Judges."  night 
One  of  the  worst  features  of  a  thoroughly  bad  Judges 
business  was  that  these  appointments  were  used  to  take  care 
of  Federalist  politicians  now  thrown  out  of  any  other  job. 
The  people  at  the  polls  had  repudiated  certain  men  for  gov 
ernment  positions ;  but  President  Adams,  the  people's  rep 
resentative,  thought  it  proper  to  place  those  men  in  more 
important  government  positions  for  life,  where  the  people 
could  not  touch  them.  Such  a  practice  is  repugnant  to 
every  principle  of  representative  government.  The  Consti 
tution  prevented  the  appointment  of  members  of  the  ex 
piring  Congress  to  any  of  the  new  judgeships  just  created 
by  them  (Art.  I,  sec.  6) ;  but  this  provision  was  evaded  with 
as  little  compunction  as  went  to  thwarting  the  will  of  the 
people.  Former  District  judges  were  promoted  to  the  new 
Circuit  judgeships,  and  their  former  places  were  filled  by 
"retired"  Federalist  congressmen.  The  Federalists,  ex 
claimed  John  Randolph  of  Virginia,  had  turned  the 
judiciary  into  "a  hospital  for  decayed  politicians." 

The  desperate  Federalists  tried  also  to  rob  the  majority  of 
its  choice  for  the  Presidency.  This  led  almost  to  civil  war. 
Jefferson  and  Burr  had  received  the  same  electoral  The  election 
vote.  Every  Republican  had  intended  Jefferson  in  the  House 
for  President  and  Burr  for  second  place  ;  but,  under 
the  clumsy  provision  of  the  Constitution  (page  318) 
the  election  between  these  two  was  now  left  to  the  old  House 
of  Representatives,  in  which  the  Federalists  had  their  ex- 


334  EXPIRING  FEDERALISM 

piring  war  majority.1  Accordingly  the  Federalists  planned 
to  create  a  deadlock  and  prevent  any  election  until  after 
March  4.  Then  they  could  declare  government  at  a  stand 
still  and  elect  the  presiding  officer  of  the  old  Senate  as 
President  of  the  country.  Jefferson  wrote  at  the  time  that 
they  were  kept  from  this  attempt  only  by  definite  threats 
that  it  would  be  the  signal  for  the  Middle  States  to  arm 
and  call  a  convention  to  revise  the  Constitution. 

The  Federalists  then  tried  another  trick  which  would 
equally  have  cheated  the  nation  of  its  will.  The  House  of 
Representatives  had  the  legal  right  to  choose  Burr  for  Presi 
dent,  instead  of  Jefferson.  It  seemed  bent  upon  doing  so; 
but  Hamilton  rendered  his  last  great  service  to  his  country 
by  opposing  and  preventing  such  action.2  So,  after  a  delay 
of  five  weeks,  and  thirty-six  ballotings,  the  House  chose 
Jefferson  President.  Early  in  the  next  Congress  the  Twelfth 
amendment  was  proposed  and  ratified,  for  naming  President 
and  Vice  President  separately  on  the  electoral  ballots. 

The  fatal  fault  of  the  Federalist  leaders  was  their  funda 
mental  disbelief  in  popular  government.  After  Jefferson's 
Federalist  victory,  in  1800,  this  feeling  found  violent  expres- 
disbeiief  in  sion.  Fisher  Ames,  a  Boston  idol,  declared : 
acy  "Our  country  is  too  big  for  union,  too  sordid  for 
patriotism,  too  democratic  for  liberty.  .  .  .  Its  vice  will  gov 
ern  it.  ...  This  is  ordained  for  democracies."  Cabot, 
another  Massachusetts  leader,  affirmed,  "We  are  demo 
cratic  altogether,  and  I  hold  democracy,  in  its  natural 
operation,  to  be  the  government  of  the  worst."  And 
Hamilton  is  reported  to  have  exclaimed,  pounding  the 
table  with  clenched  fist:  "The  people,  sir!  Your  peo 
ple  is  a  great  beast."  Dennie's  Portfolio,  the  chief  liter 
ary  publication  of  the  time,  railed  at  greater  length : 

1  The  new  House,  elected  some  months  before,  but  not  to  meet  for  nearly  a 
year  longer,  was  overwhelmingly  Republican ;  but,  by  our  awkward  arrangement, 
the  repudiated  party  remained  in  control  at  a  critical  moment. 

2  Hamilton,  does  not  seem  to  have  felt  the  enormity  of  the  proposed  violation 
of  the  nation's  will ;  but  he  knew  Burr  to  be  a  reckless  political  adventurer,  and 
thought  his  election  more  dangerous  to  the  country  than  even  the  dreaded  election 
of  Jefferson. 


DISBELIEF  IN  DEMOCRACY 


335 


"Democracy  ...  is  on  trial  here,  and  the  issue  will  be 
civil  war,  desolation,  and  anarchy.  No  wise  man  but  dis 
cerns  its  imperfections ;  no  good  man  but  shudders  at  its 
miseries;  no  honest  man  but  proclaims  its  fraud;  and  no 
brave  man  but  draws  his  sword  against  its  force."  And 
Theodore  Dwight  of  Connecticut  (brother  of  the  President 
of  Yale  College),  in  a  Fourth  of  July  oration,  declaimed  :  - 

"The  great  object  of  Jacobinism 1  ...  is  to  destroy  every 
trace  of  civilization  in  the  world,  and  force  mankind  back  into  a 
savage  state.  .  .  .  We  have  a  country  governed  by  blockheads 
and  knaves;  the  ties  of 
marriage  are  severed  and 
destroyed ;  our  wives  and 
daughters  are  thrown  into 
the  stews ;  our  children  are 
cast  into  the  world  from 
the  breast  and  forgotten ; 
filial  piety  is  extinguished  ; 
and  our  surnames,  the  only 
mark  of  distinction  among 
families,  are  abolished. 
Can  the  imagination  paint 
anything  more  dreadful  on 
this  side  hell?" 

It  was  but  a  step  from 
such  twaddle  to  sus 
pect  Jefferson  of  plot 
ting  against  the  property 
or  the  life  of  Federalist 
leaders.  In  Gouverneur 
Morris'  diary  for  1804 
we  find  the  passage : 

"Wednesday,  January  18,  I  dined  at  [Rufus]  King's  with 
General  Hamilton.  .  .  .  They  were  both  alarmed  at  the 
conduct  of  our  rulers,  and  think  the  Constitution  about  to 
be  overthrown :  I  think  it  already  overthrown.  They 

1  A  term  borrowed  from  the  French  Revolution,  and  applied  to  the  Repub 
licans  by  their  opponents,  much  as  "Bolshevist"  has  been  used  in  recent  years. 


ALEXANDER  HAMILTON.     From  the  Trumbull 
portrait,  in  the  Yale  School  of  Fine  Arts. 


336  END  OF  THE  FEDERALIST  PERIOD 

apprehend  a  bloody  anarchy :  I  apprehend  an  anarchy  in 
which  property,  not  lives,  will  be  sacrificed."  And  Fisher 
Ames  wrote:  "My  health  is  good  for  nothing,  but  ...  if 
the  Jacobins  make  haste,  I  may  yet  live  to  be  hanged."  In 
1804,  in  a  Connecticut  town,  an  applauded  Fourth  of  July 
toast  to  "The  President  of  the  United  States"  ran  — 
"Thomas  Jefferson  :  may  he  receive  from  his  fellow  citizens 
the  reward  of  his  merit  —  a  halter!"  (And  see  page  386.) 

These  faults  must  not  obscure  the  vast  service  the  Federal 
ists  had  rendered.     Alexander  Hamilton  is  the  hero  of  the 
twelve-year    Federalist    period.     He     should    be 

The  gams        .     ,        .  r .          ,  .       «         i  .  i  , i 

in  the  judged   in   the   mam    by   his   work  in  the   years 

1789-1793.  During  that  critical  era,  he  stood 
forth  —  as  no  other  man  of  the  day  could  have 
done  —  as  statesman-general  in  the  conflict  between  order 
and  anarchy,  union  and  disunion.  His  constructive  work 
and  his  genius  for  organization  were  then  as  indispensable 
to  his  country  as  Jefferson's  democratic  faith  and  inspira 
tion  were  to  be  later.  Except  for  Hamilton,  there  would 
hardly  have  been  a  Nation  for  Jefferson  to  Americanize. 
We  may  rejoice  that  Hamilton  did  not  have  his  whole 
will;  but  we  must  recognize  that  the  forces  he  set  in 
motion  made  the  Union  none  too  strong  to  withstand  the 
trials  of  the  years  that  followed. 

Those  centralizing  forces  may  be  summarized  concisely. 
The  tremendous  support  of  capital  was  secured  for  almost 
any  claim  the  government  might  make  to  doubtful  powers. 
Congress  set  the  example  of  exercising  doubtful  and  un- 
enumerated  powers ;  and  a  cover  was  devised  for  such 
practice  in  the  doctrine  of  implied  powers.  The  appellate 
jurisdiction  conferred  on  the  Supreme  Court  was  to  enable 
it  to  defend  and  extend  this  doctrine.  Congress  began  to 
add  new  States,  with  greater  dependence  of  feeling  upon 
the  National  government.  And  the  people  at  large  began 
to  feel  a  new  dignity  and  many  material  gains  from  a 
strong  Union. 


PAKT  VI  —  JEFFERSONIAN  KEPUBLIOANISM    1800-1830 
CHAPTER  XVIII 

AMERICA   IN    1800 

FROM  Jefferson  to  Lincoln,  six  great  lines  of  growth  mark 
American  history  :  its  territory  expanded  tremendously ;  the 
Americans  won  intellectual  independence  from  Old  Lines  of 
World  opinion ;  democracy  spread  and  deepened ;  growth, 
the  industrial  system  grew  vastly  complex;  slavery 
was  abolished;    and  Nationalism  triumphed  over  disunion. 
The  first  of  these,  territorial  growth,  was  the  warp  through 
which  ran  the  other  threads  of  growth.     The  ex-  Territorial 
pansion  of  civilization  into  waste  spaces  marked  exPansion 
world    history    in    the   nineteenth  century.     England    and 
Russia  led  in  the  movement;  but  not  even  for  them  was 
this  growth  so  much  the  soul  of  things  as  it  was  for  us. 

It  made  us  truly  American.  Our  tidewater  communities 
remained  "colonial"  in  feeling  long  after  they  became  inde 
pendent  politically,  —  still  hanging  timorously  on  Old- 
World  approval.  Only  when  our  people  had  climbed  the 
mountain  crests  and  turned  their  faces  in  earnest  to  the 
great  West,  did  they  cease  to  look  to  Europe  for  standards 
of  thought. 

It  made  us  democratic.     The  communities  progressive  in 
politics  have  always  been  the  frontier  parts  of  the  country, 
-  first  the  western  sections  of  the  original  States,  and  then 
successive  layers  of  new  States. 

It  created  our  complex  industrialism,  with  the  dependence 
of  one  section  upon  another ;  and  so  it  brought  on  our  conflict 
between  slave  and  free  labor. 

It  fostered  nationality.  Europe  is  convex  toward  the  sky. 
Mountains  and  seas  form  many  walls  and  moats ;  and  rivers 

337 


338  THE  AMERICA  OF  1800 

disperse  from  the  center  toward  the  extremities.  And 
so  fourteen  nations  there  divide  an  area  smaller  than  the 
Mississippi  valley.  America  is  a  "vast  concave."  Its 
mountains  guard  the  frontiers  only.  Its  streams  concen 
trate,  and  so  tend  to  unity  industrial  and  political.  The 
original  thirteen  States,  scattered  amid  the  forests  and 
marshes  of  the  Atlantic  slope,  long  clung  to  their  jealous, 
separatist  tendencies.  But  expansion  into  the  Mississippi 
valley,  wrought  out  by  nature  for  the  home  of  one  mighty 
industrial  empire,  transformed  that  handful  of  jangling 
communities  into  a  continental  nation. 

Throughout  the  nineteenth  century,  Americans  exulted  in 
their  country's  growth.  Sometimes,  it  is  true,  this  exulta- 
And  tion  expressed  itself  clumsily,  as  cheap  spread- 

American  eagleism  or  insolent  jingoism ;  and  well-meaning 
critics,  more  refined  than  robust,  saw  in  the  buoy 
ant  self-confidence  of  the  people  only  vulgar  and  grotesque 
boastfulness  about  material  bigness.  For  a  time,  American 
ideals  were  to  become  sordid,  in  a  measure ;  but  not  until 
the  last  quarter  of  the  century,  when  commercialism  had  re 
placed  romance  as  the  dominant  note  in  our  life.  Through 
all  the  earlier  period  the  plain  people  felt  a  truth  that  the 
cultured  critic  missed.  They  knew  that  this  growth  was 
not  mere  growth.  For  the  creation  of  the  nation,  and  for 
its  proper  life,  the  conquest  of  our  proper  territory  from 
savage  man  and  savage  nature  was  first  needful ;  and  this 
Titanic  conflict  with  a  continent  became  idealized  to  the 
heart  and  imagination  of  a  hardy  race.  This  was  the  hun 
dred  year  American  epic  —  its  protagonist  the  tall,  sinewy, 
saturnine  frontiersman  with  his  long  rifle  and  well-poised 
ax,  and  usually  with  his  Bible,  encamped  in  the  wilderness 
to  win  a  home  for  his  children  and  for  a  nation.  First 
among  American  writers,  Lowell  fixed  that  poem  in  words, 
-  and  happily  in  the  dialect  of  the  original  frontiersman  :  — 

"O  strange  New  World  !     That  never  yit  wast  young; 
Whose  youth  from  thee  by  grippin'  need  was  wrung ; 
Brown  foundlin'  o'  the  woods,  whose  baby-bed 
Was  prowled  roun*  by  the  Injun's  cracklin'  tread, 


PHYSICAL  ADVANTAGES  339 

And  who  grewst  strong  thru  shifts,  and  wants,  and  pains, 

Nursed  by  stern  men  with  empires  in  their  brains, 

Who  saw  in  vision  their  young  Ishmael  strain 

In  each  hard  hand  a  vassal  Ocean's  mane ! 

Thou  taught  by  freedom,  and  by  great  events, 

To  pitch  new  States  as  Old- World  men  pitch  tents !" 

This  larger  America  had  marvelous  physical  advantages. 
For  communication  with  the  outside  world,  the  two  oceans 
and  the  Gulf  give  to  the  United  States  a  coast  line  Physical 
equaled  only  by  Europe's.  Rivers  and  the  shore  of  advantages 
the  Great  Lakes  add  19,000  miles  of  navigable  interior  water 
ways,  —  a  condition  absolutely  beyond  parallel  in  any  other 
equal  portion  of  the  globe.  More  than  four  fifths  of  these 
water  roads  are  grouped  in  the  Lake  system  and  the  Missis 
sippi  system.  These  are  virtually  one  vast  system,  opening  on 
the  sea  on  two  sides  and  draining  more  than  a  million  square 
miles  of  territory  —  giving  to  cities  a  thousand  miles  inland 
the  advantages  of  seacoast  ports,  and  binding  together, 
for  instance,  Pittsburg  and  Kansas  City,  on  opposite  slopes 
of  the  great  valley  a  thousand  miles  across. 

Above  the  limit  of  navigation,  these  streams,  and  others, 
furnish  an  unrivaled  water  power.  Many  years  ago,  Pro 
fessor  Shaler  estimated  that  the  energy  already  derived 
from  the  streams  of  this  country  exceeded  that  from  the 
streams  of  all  the  rest  of  the  world.  This  power  was  of 
particular  importance  in  colonial  days.  Then,  for  a  hun 
dred  years,  it  lost  value,  relatively,  after  the  invention  of 
steam.  But  now,  with  new  devices  to  turn  it  into  electric 
power,  it  looms  again  a  chief  factor  in  future  wealth. 

The  Appalachian  region  contains  rich  deposits  of  coal 
and  iron  in  close  neighborhood  ;  while  the  Great  Lakes  make 
communication  easy  between  Appalachian  coal  and  Lake 
Superior  iron.  Other  mineral  deposits  needful  in  industry 
exist  in  abundance,  well  distributed  over  the  country,— 
copper,  lead,  zinc,  building  stone,  gold  and  silver,  salt, 
phosphates,  clays,  cements,  graphite,  grindstones,  and  a 
small  amount  of  aluminum.  In  1800,  great  forests  still 
stretched  from  the  Atlantic  to  Illinois,  western  Kentucky, 


340 


THE  AMERICA  OF  1800 


PHYSICAL  ADVANTAGES 


341 


and  northern  Minnesota ;   and  the  vast  woods  of  the  Pacific 
slope  were  soon  to  become  American. 

It  is  only  fair  to  note  two  physical  conditions  which  held 
less  of  promise. 

1.   A    sectional    elevation   on  page  342  shows  that   the 
meridian  100  cuts  the  country  into  fairly  equal  but  very 


CALIFORNIA  REDWOOD  TREES. 

different  halves.     The   eastern   half   is   essentially   of   one 
character,  and  was  easily  made  one  section  as  to  communi 
cation    by   railroads    and     canals.     Neither    fact  Two 
holds  good  for  the  western  half.     That  vast  re-  adverse 
gion  contains,  in  succession  (to  quote  Dr.  Draper), 
"an  arid,  sandy  district,  the  soil  saline  and  sterile;  an  enor 
mous  belt  of  elevated  land  without  an  equivalent  in  Europe, 
the  eastern  side  a  desert,  the  western  Asiatic  in  character ; 
and,  on  the  rapid  Pacific  incline,  the  moist,  genial  atmosphere 
of  Great  Britain  and  Spain ;  —  a  series  of  zones  with  all 
the  contrasts  of  nature.  .  .  .     The  imperial  Republic  has 
a  Persia,  an  India,  a  Palestine,  a  Tartary  of  its  own." 


342 


THE   AMERICA  OF  1800 


These  diverse  zones  from  east  to  west  had  little  oppor 
tunity,  however,  to  operate  in  hostility  to  political  union. 
The  American  people  did  not  come  under  their  influence  at 
all  until  just  before  the  great  Civil  War.  The  question  of 
Union  or  Disunion  was  settled  for  generations  to  come  by 
men  reared  under  the  influence  of  the  uniform  eastern  half  of 
the  continent. 

2.  The  lines  of  22  and  41  degrees  Fahrenheit,  for  January, 
may  be  taken  as  convenient  bounds  for  the  true  "temperate" 
zone  (map,  page  2) .  By  those,  or  any  other  suitable  lines  of 
equal  temperature,  the  climatic  temperate  zone  in  North 
America  (in  the  interior  as  on  the  coast)  is  far  narrower  than 


100° West  from  Greenwich 


SECTIONAL  ELEVATION  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES  IN  LATITUDE  40°  NORTH.     (After 
Draper.     Elevations  magnified.) 

p-o,  sea  level ;  a,  Appalachian  crest ;  b,  Mississippi ;  c,  beginning  of  saline  plains ;  d-e,  Great 
Salt  Lake  region ;  e-f,  great  elevated  basin ;  /,  Coast  range ;  o-c,  Atlantic  section ;  c-p,  Pacific 
section. 

The  slope  bd  is  more  than  1000  miles  long,  up  to  the  mountain  passes,  which  are  about  10,000 
feet  above  the  sea  (with  peaks  rising  4000  or  4300  feet  higher.)  The  true  rise,  therefore,  is  less 
than  10  feet  to  a  mile. 

in  Europe.  Its  width  in  Europe  is  one  of  the  causes  for 
that  continent's  becoming  the  earliest  home  of  true  civi 
lization.  Its  narrowness  in  America  is  in  itself  a  condition 
unfavorable  to  progress ;  but  this  influence  was  minimized 
by  the  late  date  of  settlement  and  the  advanced  civilization 
of  the  early  settlers. 

Population  had  doubled  since  the  Revolution  opened,  and 

in   1800  it  counted    5,308,483,   or  more   than  a  third  the 

population  of  the  British  Isles  at  that  time.     Of 

ancTits  dis-    the  total,  a  fifth  were  slaves.     Two  thirds  of  the 

tribution        Whites  were  north  of  Mason  and  Dixon's   line, 

and    nine    tenths    of    the    whole    population    dwelt 

east  of   the  mountains.     The  land  was  untamed,  —  forests 


THE  WESTWARD  MARCH 


343 


hardly  touched,  and  minerals  undisturbed.  Even  'in  the 
coast  district,  settlement  had  only  spotted  the  primeval 
wilderness;  and  rough  fishing  hamlets  marked  havens 
where  now  bristle  innumerable  masts  and  smokestacks. 
The  great  bulk  of  the  people  lived  in  little  agricultural 
villages  or  in  the  outlying  cabin  farms.  Less  than  one 
twentieth  were  "urban."  By  the  first  census  (1790),  only 
six  towns  had  six  thousand  people :  Philadelphia,  42,500 ; 
New  York,  32,000;  Boston,  18,000;  Charleston,  16,000; 
Baltimore,  14,000;  and  Providence,  6000.  By  1800 
these  figures  had  risen  to  70,000,  60,000,  24,000,  20,000, 
26,000,  and  8000.  The  first  three  cities  had  begun  to  pave 


N  DIANA 
ndianapolis 
ington    "  Columbij 


MOVEMENT  OP  CENTERS  OF  POPULATION   (0)   AND    MANUFACTURES  (+).      The 
Census  Bureau  did  not  determine  the  center  of  manufactures  for  1910. 

their  streets  with  cobblestones,  to  light  them  with  dimly 
flaring  lamps,  and  to  bring  in  wholesome  drinking  water 
in  wooden  pipes ;  but  police  systems  and  fire  protection 
hardly  existed,  and  the  complete  absence  of  sewers  resulted 
in  incessant  fevers  and  plagues.  Washington  was  a  village 
of  contractors  and  workmen,  living  in  sheds  and  boarding 
houses. 

The  westward  march  of  our  population  had  barely  begun. 
In  1800  the  "center  of  population"  was  eighteen  miles  west 
of  Baltimore.  Ten  years  before,  it  had  been  forty-  The  west- 
one  miles  farther  east.  The  half  million  people  west  ward  march 
of  the  mountains  dwelt  still  in  four  or  five  isolated  groups, 
all  included  in  a  broad,  irregular  wedge  of  territory  with  its 


344  THE  AMERICA  OF  1800 

apex  reaching  not  quite  to  the  Mississippi  (map,  facing  page 
258).  The  greater  part  of  our  own  half  of  the  vast  valley 
was  yet  unknown  even  to  the  frontiersman.  In  his  in 
augural,  Jefferson,  enthusiast  that  he  was  regarding  his 
country's  future,  asserted  that  we  then  had  "room  enough 
for  our  descendants  to  the  hundredth  and  even  thousandth 
generation."  Before  his  next  inaugural,  he  was  to  double 
that  territory. 

Communication  remained  much  as  before  the  Revolution. 
The  States  had  little  more  intercourse  with  one  another,  as 
Communi-  yet,  than  the  colonies  had  enjoyed.  The  lowest 
cation  letter  postage  was  eight  cents  :  from  New  York  to 

Boston  it  was  twenty  cents.  In  1790  there  were  only  75  post 
offices  in  the  country  —  for  a  territory  and  population  which 
under  modern  conditions  would  have  some  6000.  A  traveler 
could  jolt  by  clumsy  and  cramped  stagecoach,  at  four  miles 
an  hour,  from  Boston  to  New  York  in  three  days,  and  on  to 
Philadelphia  in  two  days  more  —  longer  than  it  now  takes 
to  go  from  Boston  to  San  Francisco.  Such  travel,  too, 
cost  from  three  to  four  times  as  much  as  modern  travel  by 
rail.  South  of  the  Potomac,  traveling  was  possible  only 
on  horseback  —  with  frequent  embarrassments  from  absence 
of  bridges  or  ferries.  Between  1790  and  1800,  a  few  canals 
were  constructed,  and  attention  was  turning  to  the  possi 
bilities  in  that  means  of  communication.  Freights  by  land 
averaged,  it  is  computed,  ten  cents  a  mile  per  ton,  even  in 
the  settled  areas,  —  or  eight  times  the  rates  our  railroads 
charge.  Merely  to  move  sugar  from  the  coast  to  any  point 
300  miles  inland  cost  more  than  sugar  sold  for  anywhere  in 
the  country  before  the  World  War. 

Occupations  had  changed  little  since  1775  (pages  159  ff.). 
The  year  after  the  peace  with  England  saw  the  first  American 
.  voyage  to  China ;  and  shipmasters  began  at  once 
to  reach  out  for  the  attractive  profits  of  that  Ori 
ental  trade.  The  European  wars  were  favoring  our  carrying 
trade  with  the  Old  World.  John  Jacob  Astor  was  organizing 
the  great  American  Fur  Company,  to  follow  the  furs  into 
the  far  Northwest.  Manufactures  were  making  a  little  prog- 


OCCUPATIONS  AND  WAGES 


345 


ress.  A  few  iron  mills  were  at  work ;  and,  between  1790  and 
1812,  some  of  the  machinery  recently  invented  in  England 
for  spinning  and  weaving  cotton  was  introduced.  In  Eng 
land,  by  1800,  such  machinery  had  worked  an  "Industrial 
Revolution" ;  but  it  did  not  come  into  use  extensively  here 
until  the  War  of  1812  forced  us  to  manufacture  our  own 
textiles. 

For  America  the  chief  result  of  the  Industrial  Revolu 
tion  at  this  time  was  England's  increased  demand  for  raw 
cotton  for  her  new  factories.     Cotton  had  been   "Cotton is 
costly  because  the  seed    had    always  had  to  be  Kins" 
separated  from  the  fiber  by  hand.    But  in  1793  Eli  Whitney, 


AN  EARLY  COTTON  GIN. 

a  Connecticut  schoolmaster  in  Georgia,  invented  an  "en 
gine"  for  this  work.  This  cotton  gin  was  simple  enough  to 
be  run  by  a  slave;  and  with  it  one  man  could  "clean"  as 
much  cotton  as  300  men  could  by  hand.  Southern  planters 
at  once  gave  their  attention  to  meeting  the  new  English 
demand.  In  1791  we  exported  only  200,000  pounds  :  in  1800 
the  amount  was  100  times  that;  and  this  was  doubled  the  third 
year  after.  Soon  the  South  could  boast,  "Cotton  is  King." 


346  THE  AMERICA  OF  1800 

Farming  tools  and  methods  had  improved  little  in  four 
thousand  years.  The  American  farmer  with  strenuous  toil 
Methods  of  scratched  the  soil  with  a  clumsy  wooden  homemade 
farming  DU}]  pJOWi  He  had  no  other  machines  for  horses  to 
draw,  except  a  rude  harrow  and  a  cart.  He  sowed  his  grain 
by  hand,  cut  it  with  the  sickle  of  primitive  times,  and 
threshed  it  out  on  the  barn  floor  with  the  flail  —  older  than 
history  —  if  he  did  not  tread  it  out  by  cattle,  as  the  ancient 


FARM  TOOLS  IN  1800.     The  only  farm  "machine"  not  shown  is  the  wagon. 

Egyptians  did.  The  first  threshing  machine  had  been  in 
vented  in  1785,  but  it  had  not  yet  come  into  use.  The 
cradle-scythe  —  a  hand  tool,  but  a  vast  improvement  over 
the  old  sickle  —  was  patented  in  1803.  The  first  improve 
ments  on  the  plow  date  from  experiments  on  different  shapes 
of  mold  boards  by  Thomas  Jefferson.  Soon  after  1800  ap 
peared  the  cast-iron  wheeled  plow.  This  was  soon  to  work 
a  revolution  —  permitting  deeper  and  more  rapid  tillage ; 
but  for  some  years  farmers  refused  to  use  it,  asserting  that 


SIMPLICITY  AND  FRUGALITY 


347 


the  iron  "poisoned"  the  ground.     Drills,  seeders,  mowers, 
reapers,  binders,  were  still  in  the  future. 

In  the  cities  a  small  class  of  merchants  imitated  in  a  quiet 
way  the  luxury  of  the  corresponding  class  in  England,  —  with 
spacious  homes,  silver-laden  tables,  and,  on  occa-  Home  life 
sion,  crimson-velvet  attire.     The  great  planters  of  and  wases 
the  South,  too,  lived  in  open-handed  wastefulness,  though 
with  little  real  comfort.     Otherwise  American  society  was 
simple  and  frugal,  —  with  a  standard  of  living  far  below  that 


MODERN  PLOWING 

of  to-day.  Necessities  of  life  cost  more  (so  far  as  they  were 
not  produced  in  the  home),  and  wages  were  lower.  Hodcar- 
rier  and  skilled  mason  received  about  half  the  wage  (in  pur 
chasing  value)  paid  for  corresponding  labor  to-day  and  for  a 
labor  day  lasting  from  sunrise  to  sunset.  (These  wages 
were  fifty  per  cent  better  than  before  the  Revolution,  —  so 
that  John  Jay,  high-minded  gentleman  that  he  was,  com 
plains  bitterly  about  the  "exorbitant"  wages  demanded  by 
artisans  —  much  as  John  Winthrop  did  in  1632  or  many 
a  like  gentleman  of  to-day.)  The  unskilled  laborers  who 
toiled  on  the  public  buildings  and  streets  of  Washington 
from  1793  to  1800  received  seventy  dollars  a  year  "and 


348  THE  AMERICA  OF  1800 

found"  -which  did  not  include  clothing.  And  the  income 
of  the  professional  classes  was  insignificant  by  later  stand 
ards.  John  Marshall's  practice,  when  he  was  at  the  head 
of  the  Virginia  bar,  brought  him  about  $5000  ;  but  this  was 
an  unusually  large  amount.  Says  Henry  Adams  (I,  21)  :  — 

"  Many  a  country  clergyman,  eminent  for  piety  and  even  for 
hospitality,  brought  up  a  family  and  laid  aside  some  savings  on  a 
salary  of  five  hundred  dollars  a  year.  President  Dwight  [of  Yale] 
.  .  .  eulogizing  the  life  of  Abijah  Weld,  pastor  of  Attleborough, 
declared  that  on  a  salary  of  $  250  Mr.  Weld  brought  up  eleven 
children,  besides  keeping  a  hospitable  house  and  maintaining 
charity  to  the  poor." 

Such  ministers  eked  out  their  salaries  by  tilling  small 
farms  with  their  own  hands.  The  homes  of  farmers  and 
mechanics  found  clean  sand  a  substitute  for  carpets,  and 
pewter  or  wooden  dishes  sufficient  for  tableware.  Their 
houses  had  no  linen  on  the  table,  nor  prints  on  the  wall, 
nor  many  books,  nor  any  periodicals,  unless  perhaps  a 
simplicity  small  weekly  paper.  No  woman  had  ever  cooked 
and  by  a  stove.  Household  lights  were  dim,  ill-smell 

ing  candles,  molded  in  the  home,  or  smoky  wicks  in 
whale-oil  lamps.  If  a  householder  let  his  fire  "go  out,"  he 
borrowed  live  coals  from  a  neighbor  or  struck  sparks  into 
tinder  with  flint  and  steel.  If  man  or  child  had  to  have  an 
arm  amputated,  or  broken  bones  set,  the  pain  had  to  be  borne 
without  the  merciful  aid  of  anesthetics.  The  village  shop 
made  and  sold  shoes  and  hats.  All  the  other  clothing  of  the 
ordinary  family  was  homemade,  and  from  homespun  cloth. 
The  awkward  shapes  of  coat  and  trousers  that  resulted 
from  such  tailoring  long  remained  marked  features  in  Yan 
kee  caricature.  And  says  Professor  McMaster,  -  "Many  a 
well-to-do  father  of  a  family  of  to-day  expends  each  year  on 
coats  and  frocks  and  finery  a  sum  sufficient  a  hundred  years 
ago  to  have  defrayed  the  public  expenses  of  a  flourishing 
village,  —  schoolmaster,  constable,  and  highways  included." 
Farmer,  mechanic,  and  "storekeeper"  all  had  plain  food  in 
abundance,  but  in  little  variety.  Breakfast,  "dinner,"  and 
"supper"  saw  much  the  same  combinations  of  salt  pork, 


POLITICS  AND  CULTURE  349 

salt  fish,  potatoes  and  turnips,  rye  bread,  and  dried  apples, 
with  fresh  meat  for  the  town  mechanic  perhaps  once  a 
week.  Among  vegetables  not  yet  known  were  cauliflower, 
sweet  corn,  lettuce,  cantaloupes,  rhubarb,  and  tomatoes; 
while  tropical  fruits,  like  oranges  and  bananas,  were  the 
rare  luxuries  of  the  rich.  Even  the  rich  could  not  have  ice 
in  summer.  In  all  externals,  life  was  to  change  more  in  the 
next  hundred  years  than  it  had  changed  in  the  past  thousand. 

Political  standards  were  low,  as  we  have  seen.  Says 
Professor  McMaster  very  truly  (With  the  Fathers,  71)  :  — 
"In  all  the  frauds  and  tricks  that  go  to  make  up  "Practical 
the  worst  form  of  'practical  politics '-- the  men  poetics" 
who  founded  our  State  and  National  governments  were  al 
ways  our  equals  and  often  our  masters."  To  be  sure  there 
was  less  bribery  than  in  more  recent  times.  The  great 
corporations,  —  railways,  municipal  lighting  companies,  and 
so  on,  —  which,  in  their  scramble  for  special  privileges,  were 
to  become  the  chief  source  of  corrupting  later  legislatures 
and  city  councils,  had  not  yet  appeared.  Public  servants 
had  infinitely  less  temptation  to  betray  their  trust  for  private 
gain  than  now;  but  public  opinion  as  to  the  crime  was  far  less 
sensitive  than  to-day. 

For  private  life,  drunkenness  was  the  American  vice  — 
with  victims  in  all  classes  and  in  almost  every  family.     The 
diet    created     a    universal     craving    for     strong 

4   •    i          17  i    •       j  £  i      i      Strongdrink 

drink,  foreigners  complained,  too,  ot  a  lack 
of  cleanliness,  and  were  shocked  by  the  brutal  fights  at 
public  gatherings,  with  biting  off  of  ears  and  gouging  out 
of  eyes  as  commonplace  accompaniments.  Likewise,  they 
found  American  society  coarse  and  immodest  in  conversa 
tion  (like  English  society  of  Fielding's  day,  two  generations 
earlier),  but  not  immoral  in  conduct. 

As  everywhere  else  in  the  world,  barbarous  legal  punish 
ments  and  loathsome  jail  life  still  flourished.  The  insane 
were  caged,  like  wild  beasts,  in  dungeons  underneath  the 
ordinary  prisons ;  and  debt  brought  more  men  to  prison  than 
any  crime. 

America  was  justly  famous  for  its  political  writings  in  con- 


350  THE  AMERICA  OF  1800 

nection  with  the  Revolution  and  the  Constitution.  Other 
wise,  after  the  death  of  Franklin,  the  country  had  had  no 
Dearth  of  man  of  letters  ;  and  it  had  little  desire  for  literature, 
literature  Painting  reached  a  high  point  with  Copley, 
Stuart,  and  Benjamin  West ;  but  these  American 
artists  could  not  earn  a  mechanic's  living  at  home,  and  were 
forced  to  seek  patronage  in  England.  New  England  had 
developed  her  remarkable  system  of  private  endowed  acad 
emies,  for  a  few  bright  and  energetic  boys,  as  fitting  schools 
for  college ;  but  the  Boston  Latin  School  was  almost  the 
only  survivor  of  the  Puritan  attempt  at  public  "grammar 
schools."  Several  more  colleges  had  been  organized  toward 
1800,  but  the  instruction  was  barren,  and  attendance  was 
meager.  Harvard  (page  315)  had  a  faculty  of  a  presi 
dent,  three  professors,  and  four  tutors.  The  elementary 
schools,  even  in  New  England,  had  decayed,  commonly, 
into  a  two-months  badly  taught  term  in  winter,  for  boys, 
and  a  like  term,  worse  taught,  in  summer,  for  girls. 

In  the  South,  North  Carolina  and  Georgia  were  trying, 
rather  feebly,  to  redeem  the  pledges  of  their  democratic 
constitutions  (page  222).  North  Carolina  had  established 
fourteen  academies,  supported  by  land  grants  and  State 
lotteries;  and  Georgia  set  aside  large  amounts  of  wild  land 
and  of  confiscated  Loyalist  property  to  support  schools  and 
academies.  That  State  also  planned  a  noble  "university" 
-  which  was  to  comprise  all  the  public  schools  of  all  grades. 
Distinct  instruction  in  law  and  medicine  was  beginning  in 
two  or  three  of  the  larger  colleges ;  but,  for  many  years 
to  come,  most  young  men  who  wished  to  become  lawyers  or 
doctors  prepared  themselves  mainly  by  studying  in  the 
office  of  an  old  practitioner.  Most  colleges  offered  training 
in  theology. 

Three  hopeful  conditions  in  1800,  not  yet  touched  upon, 
explain  in  large  measure  the  wonderful  progress  of  the 
Hopeful  American  people  in  the  century  that  followed, 
conditions  These  were  the  abundance  of  free  land,  the  intellec 
tual  activity  among  even  the  agricultural  classes;  and  the  pe 
culiar  American  talent  for  mechanical  invention. 


FREE  LAND  351 

1.  Free  land,  to  be  had  for  the  taking,  had  been  from  the 
beginning  the  basis  of  American  democracy.     In  colonial 
times  it  had  protected  the  artisan  against  attempts 

by  the  aristocratic  classes  to  keep  down  his  wages 
by  law  —  since  he  could  lay  aside  his  trade  for  a  farm.  So, 
too,  in  1800,  free  land  for  some  meant  better  wages  and  in 
dustrial  freedom  for  all  the  working  classes.  True,  wages 
and  the  standard  of  living  were  still  low ;  but  this  was  be 
cause  no  great  amount  of  wealth  had  been  accumulated. 
Such  wealth  and  comfort  as  existed  was  distributed  less  un 
equally  than  now.  For  the  farming  class  itself,  too,  free  land 
meant  that  only  the  best  soils  had  to  be  used,  and  that, 
even  on  them,  there  was  no  such  demand  for  costly  fertiliz 
ing  as  in  the  Old  World.  Agriculture,  the  main  American 
industry,  was  amazingly  productive,  even  with  the  primi 
tive  methods  of  that  day. 

This  free  land,  however,  ivas  already  becoming  "less  free.'9 
At  the  close  of  the  Revolution,  Virginia  and  other  States  with 
large  unsettled  territory  paid  their  soldiers  largely  in  military 
4 'land  warrants."  Each  such  warrant  authorized  the  holder 
to  locate  and  get  title  to  a  certain  amount  of  any  of  the 
State's  wild  land.  But  such  lands  were  mainly  at  some 
distance  from  the  settlements,  and  multitudes  of  soldiers 
sold  their  land  warrants  —  often  for  a  song  —  to  large 
speculators,  who  then  secured  vast  tracts  in  the  most  desir 
able  districts.  As  early  as  1784,  Washington  declared  that 
such  "  f orestallers "  had  left  hardly  a  valuable  spot  in 
Virginia's  lands  within  reach  of  the  Ohio.  He  had  reason 
to  know,  —  for  he  was  just  back  from  the  West  where  he 
himself  had  located  enormous  holdings,  partly  on  military 
warrants  purchased  from  soldiers. 

2.  The  second  consideration  was  even  more  important. 
In  every  Old- World  land  the  men  who  tilled  the  intellectual 
soil   were   a   peasantry  -  -  slow,    stolid,    unenter-  filers ^ the 
prising,  wholly  distinct  from  the  rest  of  society,  soil 
Here,    in    1800,    the   men   who   tilled  the  soil  --to  quote 
Francis  A.  Walker's  passage  :  - 


352 


THE   AMERICA  OF   1800 


"were  the  same  kind  of  men  precisely  as  those  who  filled  the 
professions  or  were  engaged  in  commercial  or  mechanical  pursuits. 
Of  two  sons  of  the  same  mother,  one  [the  weakling  of  the  family 

perhaps,  and  so  thought 
unfit  for  a  farmer]  became 
a  lawyer,  perhaps  a  judge, 
or  went  down  to  the  city 
and  became  a  merchant,  or 
gave  himself  to  political 
affairs  and  became  a  gov 
ernor  or  a  member  of  Con 
gress.  The  other  stayed 
upon  the  ancestral  home 
stead,  or  made  a  new  one 
for  himself  and  his  children 
out  of  the  public  domain, 
remaining  all  his  life  a 
plain  hardworking  farmer 
[the  children  of  the  two 
families  mingling  without 
suspicion  of  social  or  in 
tellectual  distinction].  .  .  .  There  was  then  no  other  country  in 
the  world,  .  .  .  where  equal  mental  activity  and  alertness  [were]  ap 
plied  to  the  soil  as  to  trade  and  industry." 

3.  Of  mechanical  insight  and  invention,  to  quote  General 
Walker  again,  -  "There  is  only  one  nation  in  the  world  to 
Mechanical  the  mass  of  whose  population  this  form  of  genius 
invention  can  ]3e  attributed.  That  nation  is  our  own.  There 
are  few  Americans  of  American  stock  .  .  .  who  have  not 
mechanical  aptitude  in  a  measure  which  elsewhere  would 
make  them  marked  men.  '  The  American  invents  as  the 
Greek  chiselled,  as  the  Venetian  painted,  as  the  modern  Italian 
sings." 


A  COLONIAL  SPINNING  WHEEL,  now  preserved 
in  Daniel  Webster's  old  home  in  Marshfield, 
Massachusetts.  In  Webster's  boyhood,  his 
mother,  in  the  farm  home,  spun  the  wool  for 
his  clothing  on  this  wheel  or  on  one  like  it. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

THE  REVOLUTION  OF  1800 

As  real  a  revolution  in  the  principles  of  our  government,  as  that  of  1776 
was  in  its  form.  —  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

A  Republic,  you  tell  me,  is  a  government  in  which  the  People  have  an 
essential  share  in  the  Sovereignty.  Is  not  the  whole  Sovereignty,  my  friend, 
essentially  in  the  People?  —  SAMUEL  ADAMS,  in  a  letter  to  John  Adams. 

FROM    1801    to    1809,    American    history    is    sometimes 
called  "the  biography  of  Thomas  Jefferson."     The  nation 
believed  in  him;    Congress  swayed  to  his  wish;  Thomas 
his  great  Secretaries   (Madison  for  State  affairs,  Jefferson 
and  Gallatin  J  for  the  Treasury)  admired  and  followed  him. 

Jefferson  was  six  feet,  two  and  a  half  inches  tall.  His 
frame  was  vigorous  but  loose- jointed.  His  hair  was  sandy ; 
and  his  face  irregular,  freckled,  and  sunny.  He  was  an 
athletic  and  reckless  horseman,  an  enthusiastic  farmer,  and 
the  valued  correspondent  of  the  most  famous  scholars  of 
Europe.  The  accounts  of  contemporaries  show  him,  sitting 
on  one  hip  with  neglected  dress  and  slippers  down-at-the- 
heel,  chatting  with  rambling  charm;  or,  with  methodical 
industry,  recording  minutest  weather  details;  or  drawing 
up  neat  tables  to  show,  through  a  period  of  several  years, 
the  dates  for  the  appearance  of  thirty-seven  vegetables  in 
the  Washington  markets ;  or  reporting  judicial  decisions  - 
in  the  first  American  Reports;  or  devising  rules  for  parlia 
mentary  procedure  —  again  the  first  volume  of  its  kind ; 
or  directing,  with  gentle  suggestion,  the  politics  of  a  distant 
State ;  or  discussing  with  a  French  scientist  the  latest 

1  Gallatin  was  a  Swiss  emigrant,  and,  for  some  years  past,  a  leader  of  the  radical 
Republican  party  in  Pennsylvania.  He  had  criticized  Hamilton's  financial  policy 
keenly,  and  had  even  been  identified  with  the  earlier  stages  of  the  movement  that 
resulted  in  the  Whisky  Rebellion. 

353 


354  THE  JEFFERSONIAN  REPUBLICANS 

discovery  in  that  celebrity's  special  field;  or  inditing  some 
other  form  of  that  voluminous  correspondence  which  well 
earns  him  the  title  "the  greatest  American  letter- writer." 
In  1800  Jefferson  had  already  had  a  distinguished  career. 
He  entered  the  Virginia  Assembly  in  the  memorable  session 
His  earlier  of  1769.  Four  years  later  he  was  one  of  the  leaders 
career  m  that  body  in  organizing  the  first  Intercolo 

nial  Committee  of  Correspondence.  In  1775  he  became  a 
delegate  to  the  Continental  Congress.  A  year  later  he  was 
again  in  the  Virginia  Assembly,  to  lead  a  social  revolution 
in  that  State,  by  legislation,  amid  all  the  turmoil  of  war. 
Reforms  in  Under  his  guidance,  the  reform  party,  in  1777- 
Virginia  1778,  (j)  prohibited  further  importation  of  slaves 
into  the  State;  (2)  swept  away  the  church  establishment, 
along  with  every  vestige  of  ancient  checks  upon  religious 
freedom ;  (3)  overthrew  entail  and  primogeniture  —  the 
semifeudal  bulwarks  of  the  landed  aristocracy ;  and  (4)  re 
placed  the  complex  barbarities  of  the  old  legal  system  by  a 
new  code  simple,  compact,  and  humane.  In  all  this  struggle 
Jefferson  was  supported  by  the  solid  backing  of  the  western 
Scotch-Irish  counties.  His  victory  Americanized  Virginia 
and  consolidated  there  the  Democratic  party  he  was  after 
ward  to  organize  for  the  nation  at  large. 

The  aristocratic  opposition  was  particularly  bitter  against 
the  abolition  of  the  rule  of  primogeniture.  The  leaders 
pleaded  for  at  least  a  double  inheritance  for  the  oldest  son. 
Not  unless  it  can  be  shown  that  the  oldest  son  needs  twice 
as  much  to  feed  and  clothe  him,  replied  Jefferson.  Soon 
after,  Jefferson's  only  son,  a  babe,  died  from  exposure  in  a 
midwinter  flight  from  a  Tory  raid ;  and  the  aristocratic 
planters  were  not  ashamed  to  call  this  calamity  a  "righteous 
judgment  of  God,"  "destroying  the  family  of  the  man  who 
had  wished  to  destroy  all  families." 

Jefferson's  views  had  been  even  more  far-reaching  than 
the  actual  accomplishment.  He  had  hoped  for  gradual 
emancipation  of  slaves  and  for  a  noble  system  of  public 
schools.  The  latter  scheme  he  returned  to  enthusiast!- 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  355 

cally,  but  with  little  result,  in  his  old  age;  and  he  did 
at  last  carry  out  his  plans  for  reorganizing  the  University 
of  Virginia  —  on  the  main  lines  along  which  the  State 
universities  were  afterwards  to  develop. 

For  the  next  two  years  (1779-1780)  Jefferson  served  as 
governor  of  Virginia.  Then  after  brief  retirement,  due  to 
private  griefs,  he  reappeared  in  the  Continental  Congress  in 
1783,  for  brief  but  distinguished  service  (pages  252,  255). 
Next  we  see  him  American  Minister  in  France.  There  he 
watched  the  early  stages  of  the  French  Revolu-  Lifein 
tion  with  eager  sympathy,  and  while  preserving  France, 
in  public  the  impartial  attitude  proper  for  a  foreign 
minister,  he  was  in  private  the  valued  adviser  of  Lafayette 
and  other  reformers,  whose  inexperienced  enthusiasm  he  was 
sometimes  able  to  direct  wisely.  French  thought  now  se 
cured  a  strong  influence  upon  him ;  but  his  admiration  for 
that  country  in  no  way  weakened  his  Americanism.  He  urged 
Monroe  to  come  to  Europe,  "because  it  will  make  you  adore 
your  own  country,  its  soil,  climate,  equality,  liberty,  laws, 
people,  manners"  ;  and  he  predicted  that,  while  many  Euro 
peans  would  remove  to  America,  no  man  then  living  would 
see  an  American  seek  a  home  in  Europe.  In  1790  he  returned 
to  America  to  take  a  place  in  Washington's  Cabinet,  and 
then  to  build  skillfully  the  party  of  the  people,  which  tri 
umphed  in  his  election  to  the  presidency.  It  is  characteristic 
that,  at  the  close  of  his  brief  Autobiography,  in  counting 
up  his  services  to  his  fellows,  Jefferson  gives  prominent  place 
to  his  efforts  in  making  navigable  a  Virginia  creek  and  to 
his  introducing  into  South  Carolina  a  heavier  and  better 
rice  than  was  before  grown  in  America.  ''The  greatest 
service  which  can  be  rendered  to  any  country,"  he  comments, 
"is  to  add  a  useful  plant  to  its  cultivation." 

The  two  things  that  men  remember  against  this  broad 
background  of  varied  activity  are  that  Jefferson  gave  im 
mortal  form  to  the  principles  of  the  political  Revolution  of 
1776,  in  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  and  that  he  stood 
for  the  democratic  aspirations  of  the  social  "revolution  of 


356  THE  JEFFERSONIAN  REPUBLICANS 

1800."  The  modest  shaft  that  marks  his  resting  place 
bears  only  the  words  (selected  by  himself),  "Author  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  of  the  statute  of  Virginia  for 
Religious  freedom,  and  Father  of  the  University  of  Virginia." 
With  true  insight,  Jefferson  represented  in  that  epitaph  his 
work  in  three  related  fields,  —  political  liberty,  religious 
liberty,  and  higher  popular  education.  History  adds  the 
proud  dictum  of  one  of  his  biographers:  "If  America  is 
right,  Thomas  Jefferson  was  right." 

Jefferson's  political  principles,  for  domestic  concerns,  were 
(1)  trust  in  the  people ;  (2)  restriction  of  all  government,1 
Jefferson's  especially  of  the  Central  government ;  (3)  frugal- 
political  ity;  (4)  simplicity;  and  (5)  "encouragement  of 
folndc£leS  agriculture,  and  of  commerce  as  her  handmaid," 
mestic  rather  than  of  manufactures.  These  principles 
are  summed  up  admirably  in  his  first  inaugu 
ral.  "Absolute  acquiescence  in  the  decisions  of  the 
majority  is  the  vital  principle  of  republics."  The  best 
government  is  one  that  "while  it  restrains  men  from 
injuring  one  another,  shall  leave  them  otherwise  free  to 
regulate  their  own  pursuits,  and  shall  not  take  from  the 
mouth  of  labor  the  bread  it  has  earned."  He  further 
declares  his  purpose  to  secure  "equal  and  exact  justice 
to  all  men,"  and  to  defend  "freedom  of  religion,  freedom  of 
the  press,  and  freedom  of  the  person." 

As  to  foreign  affairs  Jefferson  hoped  to  begin  a  golden  age 
of  peace.  War  was  a  blunder.  Army  and  navy  we  could 
Devotion  dispense  with.  At  most,  we  could  need  only  "corn- 
to  peace  mercial  coercion"  to  secure  our  rights  from  other 
nations:  "Our  commerce  is  so  valuable  to  them,"  he  ar 
gued,  "that  they  will  be  glad  to  purchase  it  when  the  only 
price  we  ask  is  that  they  do  us  justice."  Years  later,  when 

1  Government  in  that  day  was  almost  wholly  repressive,  —  or  beneficent  to  a 
privileged  class  only,  at  the  expense  of  other  classes.  It  did  not  yet  dream  of 
providing  schools,  libraries,  hospitals,  asylums,  weather  bureaus,  or  the  manifold 
other  activities  of  general  helpfulness  now  belonging  to  it.  In  the  closing  years 
of  his  administration,  Jefferson  became  one  of  the  early  advocates  of  this  wider 
helpfulness  (page  364). 


THE   "REVOLUTION  OF   1800"  357 

rude  experience  had  shattered  his  noble  dream  of  universal 
peace,  Jefferson  turned  to  a  vision  of  a  New-World  peace,  with 
the  United  States  as  the  protecting  elder  brother  of  Ameri 
can    nations.     He    hopes     for     "fraternization    among    all 
American  nations,"  and  dwells  upon  the  impor 
tance  of  their  "coalescing  in  an  American  policy  Of  the*  ' 
totally  independent  of  that  of  Europe,"  adding,   Monrpe 
"When  our  strength  will  permit  us  to  give  the  law 
to  our  hemisphere,  it  should  be  that  the  meridian  of  the  mid- 
Atlantic  should  be  the  line  .of  demarcation  between  peace 
and  war,  —  on  this  side  of  which  no  act  of  hostility  should 
be  permitted."     And  again,   "The  day  is  not  far  distant 
when  we  [the  United  States]  may  formally  require  a  median 
of  partition  through  the  ocean,  on  the  hither  side  of  which  no 
European  gun  shall  ever  be  fired,  nor  an  American  on  the 
other,  and  when,  during  the  rage  of  eternal  war  in  Europe, 
the  lion  and  the  lamb  within  our  regions  shall  lie  down  in 
peace." 

The  election  of  Jefferson  marked  a  true  peaceful  revolu 
tion.     The  nation  had  resumed  its  progress  toward  democ 
racy,  after  the  years  of  interruption  due  to  the  The «« revo_ 
conservative    crusade    for  a  strong    government,  lution "  of 
Jefferson  urged  a  friend  to  accept  a  place  in  the  * 
Cabinet  so  that  he  might  be  of  service  "in  the  new  estab 
lishment  of  Republicanism  .   .   .  hitherto  we  have  seen  only 
its  travestie."     The  change,  however,  was    rather   in   the 
spirit  of  the  administration  than  in  its  governmental  acts. 

"Jeffersonian    simplicity"    has    become    a    byword.     At 
each  previous  inauguration,  the  President  had  been  driven 
in  state,  in  coach  and  six,  to  the  ceremony.     Jeffer-  „  jeffer_ 
son  walked  quietly  from  his  boarding  house  to  the  sonian 
Capitol  to  take  the  oath  of  office.     Washington  £ 
had   "opened"   Congress  in  person  by  a  speech  that  left 
many  hints  of  a  resemblance  to  the  English  "speech  from 
the  throne";  and  Congress  had  replied  by  drawing  up  an 
"address  of  thanks,"  and  then  driving  in  formal  procession 
to  the  President's  residence  and  standing  bareheaded  in  his 


358  JEFFERSON'S  ADMINISTRATION 

presence  while  it  was  read.  Adams  had  jealously  guarded 
all  these  trappings.  But  from  the  first,  Jefferson  set  the 
example  that  all  communication  with  Congress,  even  the 
opening  messages,  should  be  by  writing.  (In  1913  Woodrow 
Wilson  restored  the  personal  speech  to  Congress  without  the 
original  aristocratic  trappings.)  In  matters  of  hospitality 
at  the  White  House,  too,  Jefferson  discarded  the  elaborate 
and  courtly  ceremonial  of  Washington  and  Adams  —  pos 
sibly  to  an  unwise  degree,  since  the  new  "  pell-mell " 
methods  irritated  needlessly  certain  old-world  diplomats  at 
Washington. 

Not  much  legislative  reform  was  found  necessary.  The 
vicious  Alien  and  Sedition  Acts  had  been  enacted  for  only 
two  years,  and  had  expired.  The  fourteen -year  Natural 
ization  law  of  1797  was  repealed,  along  with  all  internal 
revenue  taxes  (whisky  tax  and  stamp  duties), 
of  the  and  with  the  Judiciary  Act  of  1801..  The  Fed- 

IcfofYloi  era^sts  charge(l  that  this  repeal  was  unconsti 
tutional,  and  that  the  Republicans  had  dragged 
the  judiciary  into  politics !  Congress  is  forbidden  by 
the  Constitution  to  decrease  the  salary  of  a  judge,  or  to 
dismiss  him  from  office.  Can  it,  then,  take  salary  and 
office  from  the  judge  by  abolishing  the  court?  To  prevent 
the  Supreme  Court  from  interfering  with  the  repeal,  another 
law  adjourned  the  sittings  of  that  body  for  some  months. 
(This  precedent  of  abolishing  a  Federal  Court  has  been 
followed  once  in  later  years,  when  the  Commerce  Court  was 
abolished  in  1913.) 

One  other  reform  in  finance  is  notable.  In  the  past  the 
administration  had  had  the  employment  of  whatever  funds 
Economy  Congress  raised.  Now  Jefferson  and  Gallatin 
and  the  limited  their  own  tremendous  power  in  this  mat 
ter,  by  calling  upon  Congress  to  make  specific 
appropriations  only.  This  precedent  has  been  followed 
ever  since.  The  debt  had  never  been  decreased  by  the 
Federalists ;  and  the  war  flurry  of  1798  had  raised  it, 
through  new  loans,  to  $83,000,000,  with  an  interest  charge 
each  year  of  $3,500,000.  During  the  last  years  of  Fed- 


AND  THE  CIVIL  SERVICE  359 

eralist  rule,  moreover,  ordinary  expenditure  had  outrun 
ordinary  income.  One  of  Jefferson's  dearest  hopes  was 
to  abolish  the  national  debt,  and  he  and  Gallatin  planned 
to  get  rid  of  half  of  it  in  eight  years.  The  $6,000,000 
formerly  spent  on  army  and  navy  was  cut  to  $1,000,000 
(the  army  being  decreased  to  3000  men  and  most  of  the  war 
vessels  being  docked),  and  every  saving  possible  in  any 
other  department  was  rigidly  enforced.  In  1803  the  pur 
chase  of  Louisiana  added  $15,000,000  to  the  debt,  and  war 
with  the  Barbary  Pirates  compelled  more  military  expense. 
The  giving  up  of  internal  taxes,  too,  had  greatly  reduced  the 
revenue.  Still  Jefferson's  promises  were  well  kept :  at  the 
end  of  his  eight  years,  the  debt  had  been  cut  down  to 
$57,000,000,  with  an  interest  charge  of  only  $2,000,000  a 
year. 

Jefferson's  most  annoying  problems  had  to  do  with  the 
Civil  Service.  The  Federalist  Presidents  had  excluded  Re 
publicans  from  all  office.  They  had  not  had  to  The  Civil 
dismiss  any  :  none  got  in.  This  policy,  too,  had  Service 
been  emphatically  avowed.  Washington  wrote  to  problem 
Pickering,  his  Secretary  of  War  in  his  second  administra 
tion  :  "I  shall  not,  while  I  have  the  honor  of  administering 
the  government,  bring  a  man  into  any  office  of  conse 
quence,  knowingly,  whose  political  tenets  are  adverse  to  the 
measures  the  general  government  are  pursuing;  for  this, 
in  my  opinion,  would  be  a  sort  of  political  suicide."  And 
Senator  Bayard,  as  mouthpiece  for  Adams,  declared,  "The 
politics  of  the  office-seeker  will  be  the  great  object  of  the 
President's  attention,  and  an  invincible  objection  if  differ 
ent  from  his  own."  Washington  and  Adams  did  not  use 
office  to  pay  for  party  services  :  they  did  use  it  to  strengthen 
the  "  right  party  "  (their  party)  and  so  "  save  the  coun 
try."  This  attitude  was  morally  very  far  from  the  later 
spoils  system  of  Jackson's  day,  but  it  was  practically  sure 
to  glide  into  that  system. 

Now  had  come  the  first  change  of  party.  If  Jefferson 
followed  Washington's  policy  to  its  logical  conclusion,  he 
would  dismiss  all  officeholders,  to  make  room  for  Re- 


360  JEFFERSON'S  ADMINISTRATION 

publicans.  His  opponents  feared,  and  many  supporters 
hoped,  that  he  would  do  so.  Jefferson  removed  only  about 
twenty  officials  for  political  reasons,  —  these  mainly  Federal 
marshals  and  attorneys ;  l  and  in  spite  of  all  changes  from 
various  causes,  more  than  half  of  the  officials  of  March  4, 
1801,  were  still  holding  office  four  years  later. 

Moreover,  Jefferson  and  Gallatin  were  the  first  statesmen 
in  the  world  to  think  out  the  principles  upon  which  alone  a 
non-partisan  civil  service  can  be  permanently  maintained. 
They  saw  and  said  that  each  officeholder  ought  to  be  at 
liberty  to  think  and  vote  as  his  conscience  led,  but  that, 
to  preserve  this  freedom,  he  must  refrain  from  "electioneer 
ing  activity,"  or,  in  modern  phrase,  from  "offensive  partisan 
ship."  Gallatin  prepared  a  circular  to  warn  subordinates 
in  his  department  that  "while  freedom  of  opinion  and  free 
dom  of  suffrage  are  imprescriptible  rights,  the  President 
would  regard  any  exercise  of  official  influence  to  control  the 
same  rights  in  others  as  destructive  of  the  fundamental 
principles  of  a  Republican  constitution."  Gallatin  makes 
clear  that  this  was  to  apply  to  official  activity  for  the  adminis 
tration  as  well  as  against  it.  Jefferson's  views  are  set  forth  in 
his  correspondence :  — 

"Mr.  Adams'  last  appointments,  when  he  knew  he  was  naming 
counsellors  and  aids  for  me  and  not  for  himself,  I  set  aside  as  far  as 
depends  on  me,  and  will  not  deliver  commissions  when  still  in 
executive  hands.  Officers  who  have  been  guilty  of  gross  abuses 
of  office,  such  as  marshals  packing  juries,  etc.  [to  secure  conviction 
under  prosecution  for  "sedition"],  I  shall  now  remove,  as  my  pred 
ecessor  should  have  done.  .  .  .  The  right  of  opinion  shall  suffer 
no  invasion  from  me"  (Letter  to  Gerry,  March  29,  1801).  He 
then  thought  that  "of  the  thousands  of  officers  in  the  United 
States,  a  very  few  individuals  only,  probably  not  twenty,  will  be 
removed"  (Letter  to  Rush,  March  24).  Later  he  adds  "indus 
trious  partisanship"  as  a  proper  cause  for  removal ;  and  July  21, 
in  reply  to  Federalist  critics,  he  asks  whether  the  minority  expect 

1  From  the  very  first,  Jefferson  stated  his  intention  to  change  some  of  these 
officers,  as  the  only  means  left  him  to  partly  correct  the  Federalist  monopoly  of 
the  courts.  The  courts  themselves  he  could  not  change,  but  he  could  keep  open 
these  "doorways." 


AND  THE  FEDERALIST  COURTS  361 

to  continue  to  monopolize  the  offices  from  which,  when  in  power, 
they  excluded  all  their  opponents,  and  queries  how  a  "due  par 
ticipation"  for  the  majority  is  to  be  obtained,  since  vacancies  "by 
death  are  few,  by  resignation,  none."  About  a  year  later  he 
admits  that  his  program  has  not  been  followed  "with  the  un- 
deviating  resolution  I  could  have  wished"  (Oct.  25,  1802). 

Even  after  the  repeal  of  the  Judiciary  Act  of  1801,  the 
Federalists  remained  in  complete  possession  of  the  courts ; 
and  those  courts  showed  a  bitter  and  shameful  par-  Federalist 
tisanship.  Chief  Justice  Dana  of  Massachusetts,  partisanship 
in  1798,  during  a  political  campaign,  in  a  charge  to  mthecourts 
a  grand  jury,  attacked  the  Republican  party  (including 
Jefferson  especially)  as  "apostles  of  atheism,  anarchy,  blood 
shed,  and  plunder."  His  charge  was  toasted  at  a  Boston 
banquet,  as  dictated  by  "intelligence,  integrity,  and  patriot 
ism."  Even  Washington  so  approved  it  that  he  sent  copies 
to  his  friends. 

Justice  Chase  of  the  Supreme  Court  had  given  even  greater 
cause  of  offense.  In  1803,  in  a  charge  to  a  Maryland  grand 
jury,  he  had  declared  that  the  Republican  attempt  in 
Maryland  to  establish  manhood  suffrage,  "will,  in  my 
judgment,  take  away  all  security  for  property  and  personal 
liberty  [in  that  State]  .  .  .  The  modern  doctrines  .  .  .  that 
all  men  .  .  .  are  entitled  to  equal  liberty  and  equal  rights 
have  brought  this  mighty  mischief  upon  us."  Chase  had 
presided  also  at  two  "sedition"  trials,  and  had  manifested 
there  a  partisan  and  browbeating  disposition.  Twice  his 
violence  drove  from  the  court  the  most  eminent  lawyers 
of  the  circuit ;  and  during  the  political  campaign  of  1800, 
he  had  broken  up  the  sessions  in  order  to  make  Federalist 
speeches. 

Jefferson  felt  keenly  the  need  of  correcting  the  partisan 
character  of  this  appointive  branch  of  the  government.     In 
December,  1801,  he  wrote  :  "They  [the  Federalists]   Thefailure 
have  retired  into  the  Judiciary  as  a  stronghold,   of  impeach- 
There  the  remains  of  Federalism  are  to  be  preserved  J 
and  fed  from  the  treasury  ;  and  from  that  battery  all  the  works 
of  Republicanism  are  to  be  beaten  down  and  destroyed." 


362  JEFFERSON'S  ADMINISTRATION 

But  the  principles  of  the  Republicans  with  regard  to  the  gov 
ernment  forbade  them  to  enlarge  the  courts,  and  so  get  con 
trol.  And  in  any  case  they  could  not  very  well  have  done 
that  just  after  repealing  the  vicious  Federalist  law.  All  Fed 
eral  judges  held  "during  good  behavior"  ;  and  the  only  way 
left  for  the  Republicans  to  get  a  foothold  was  to  remove 
judges  by  impeachment.  After  much  hesitation  and  only 
half-heartedly,  Jefferson  and  his  party  tried  this  method. 
Justice  Pickering,  of  the  New  Hampshire  District,  was 
removed  for  drunkenness  while  on  duty,1  but  an  attempt 
to  remove  Justice  Chase  from  the  Supreme  Court  for  his 
partisan  conduct  failed  of  the  necessary  two-thirds  vote  in 
the  Senate.  Then  the  movement  was  dropped. 

The  breakdown  of  this  attack  upon  Federalism  in  the 
Courts  left  John  Marshall  free  to  complete  Hamilton's  work 
John  and  to  make  the  Constitution  a  National  constitu- 

Marshaii  ^ion  by  his  judicial  decisions.  Marshall  was  one  of 
Adams'  latest  appointments.  He  served  as  Chief  Justice  from 
1801  to  1835  ;  and  his  intellectual  dominance  over  his  associ 
ates  brought  to  his  way  of  thought  five  Republican  justices 
appointed  by  Jefferson  and  Madison  to  out  weight  him.  He 
was  a  man  of  simple  manners,  of  direct,  upright,  engaging 
character,  of  mighty  intellect,  but  of  strong  prejudices. 

Marshall's  first  great  decision  was  in  the  famous  case  of 
Marbury  vs.  Madison.  Adams'  appointments  had  been  com- 
"  Marbury  pitted  so  late  on  March  3  that  some  of  the  com- 
vs.  Madi-  missions  were  left  undelivered.  Jefferson  declared 
such  papers  of  no  account,  and  made  new  appoint 
ments.  A  certain  Marbury,  whom  Adams  had  named  a  Jus 
tice  of  the  Peace  for  the  District  of  Columbia,  sued  in  the  Su 
preme  Court  for  a  writ  of  mandamus,  to  compel  Madison  (the 

1  The  Federalists  defended  Pickering  on  the  ground  of  insanity,  —  insisting 
at  the  same  time  that  there  was  no  constitutional  ground  for  impeachment.  In 
deed,  until  recently  it  has  been  held  that  the  "high  crimes  and  misdemeanors," 
named  in  the  Constitution  as  the  occasion  for  impeachment,  must  be  such  offenses 
as  the  accused  man  might  be  indicted  for  before  a  criminal  court.  The  difficulty 
was  evaded  this  time  in  the  Senate  by  voting  that  Pickering  was  "  guilty  as  charged." 
In  1913,  the  Senate,  without  any  evasion,  removed  Justice  Archbold  from  the 
United  States  Commerce  Court  for  "graft,"  although  no  law  could  reach  his 
offense. 


AND  JOHN  MARSHALL  363 

new  Secretary  of  State)  to  issue  to  him  his  withheld  commis 
sion.  The  court  declared,  through  Marshall's  pen,  that  it 
had  no  jurisdiction  in  such  a  suit.1  True,  the  Judiciary  Act  of 
1780  had  distinctly  given  the  Supreme  Court  authority  to 
issue  just  such  writs  ;  but  since  the  Constitution  itself  did  not 
name  any  such  contest  between  a  citizen  and  a  public  officer 
as  included  in  the  original  jurisdiction  for  the  Supreme 
Court,  that  particular  provision  of  the  law  of  1789  was  now 
declared  unconstitutional  and  void. 

This  was  the  first  time  the  Supreme  Court  declared  void 
any  part  of  an  Act  of  Congress.     The  clause  was  one  con 
ferring  power  upon  the  court  itself.     No  other  so  First  as_ 
modest  opportunity  could  have  been  found.     But  sumption 
the  argument  of  the  Chief  Justice  went  on,  far  be-  the  couruo 
yond  the  immediate  case,  to  establish  this  power  void  an  act 
of  the  courts  in  all  cases  where,  in  their  judgment,  c 
they  might  find  conflict  between  a  law  and  the  fundamental 
law.     The  decision  was  to  become  the  basis  for  future  exten 
sion  of  this  power. 

In  1804  Jefferson  was  reflected  by  162  electoral  votes  to 
14 ;  and  even  in  the  hold-over  Senate  of  34  members,  there 
were  only  7  Federalists.  Jefferson's  popularity  Jefferson's 
seemed  higher  than  ever.  Early  in  his  second  term,  reelection 
the  Vermont  legislature  requested  him  to  permit  his  name  to 
be  used  a  third  time,  for  the  campaign  of  1808,  and  this  nomi 
nation  was  promptly  seconded  by  legislatures  in  seven  other 
States.  Jefferson  declined,  and  used  the  opportunity  to  estab 
lish  firmly  one  more  Republican  doctrine.  Washington's  re 
fusal  to  be  a  candidate  for  a  third  term  had  no  constitutional 
bearing.  He  refused  for  purely  personal  reasons,  and  he 
felt  it  needful  to  excuse  himself  against  a  possible  charge  of 
lack  of  patriotism  in  laying  down  his  task.  Jefferson 

1  Marshall's  partisan  feeling  led  him,  none  the  less,  to  add  that  Marbury  was 
legally  entitled  to  the  office.  Since  Marshall  had  been  acting  through  March  3 
as  Adams'  Secretary  of  State,  in  signing  commissions,  he  came  perilously  near 
acting  as  judge  in  a  case  in  which  he  was  himself  vitally  interested.  Says  Pro 
fessor  Channing  (Jeffersonian  System,  118),  —  "This  is  the  one  decision  in  Mar 
shall's  judicial  career  which  still  gives  pain  to  all  but  his  blindest  admirers." 


364  JEFFERSON'S  ADMINISTRATION 

declined,  in  order  to  establish  a  principle.  While  the  Con 
stitution  was  in  the  making,  he  had  written  from  Paris 
urging  that  a  limit  should  be  set  in  that  document  upon 
the  number  of  times  the  chief  magistrate  might  be  reflected  ; 
and  now  he  urged  that  some  limit  should  be  fixed  by  custom, 
or  the  tenure  might  come  to  be  for  life.  The  limit,  he 
added,  should  be  two  terms,  as  already  suggested  by  Wash 
ington's  action.  Any  longer  tenure  would  be  "dangerous 
to  Republican  institutions." 

This  response  caught  the  popular  imagination.  Addresses 
poured  in  from  mass  meetings  and  legislatures  approving  its 
And  the  patriotism  and  its  doctrine,  and  expressing  ardent 
third-term  hope  that  the  example  might  be  followed  in  suc 
ceeding  history.  The  principle  became  at  once  so 
firmly  embedded  in  our  unwritten  constitution  that  only  once 
has  an  attempt  been  made  to  override  it. 

In  Jefferson's  second  administration,  a  new  tone  of  central 
ization  was  noticeable.  Republicanism  had  been  modified  by 
A  tendency  tne  verv  completeness  of  its  victory.  Nearly  half  its 
toward  cen-  adherents  now  had  formerly  been  Federalists,  and 
traiization  stm  remajne(j  hajf  Federalist  in  political  thought. 
Moreover,  the  "Old  Republicans"  themselves,  under  the  re 
sponsibilities  and  opportunities  of  office,  began  to  feel  differ 
ently  toward  the  power  of  the  government.  Jefferson,  in 
deed,  strove  valiantly  not  to  "make  waste  paper  of  the 
Constitution  by  construction."  But  he  came  to  favor 
amendments  such  as  would  have  greatly  enlarged  the  sphere 
of  the  government's  action.  In  his  second  inaugural,  he 
called  attention  to  the  rapid  decrease  of  the  debt,  and  to  the 
fact  that  only  a  few  millions  more  could  be  taken  up  in  the 
next  few  years  (the  rest  not  being  due) .  He  then  suggested 
that,  instead  of  decreasing  the  revenue  tariffs  "on  luxuries," 
the  surplus  revenue,  by  a  proper  amendment  to  the  Constitution, 
might  be  applied  to  "rivers,  canals,  roads,  arts,  manufactures, 
education,  and  other  great  objects."  Soon  after,  he  wrote 
to  Gallatin  that  he  was  "impatient  to  begin  upon  canals, 
roads,  colleges,  etc." 


AND  INTERNAL  IMPROVEMENTS        365 

Lacking  the  amendments,  Jefferson  reluctantly  acted  some 
times  under  the  doctrine  of  implied  powers  which  he  had  once 
denounced.  The  first  such  extension  of  powers  con-  Harbor  im- 
cerned  the  improvement  of  harbors.  The  govern-  Provements 
ment  raised  a  sunken  gunboat  which  imperiled  a  harbor  en 
trance  ;  and  this  precedent  led  to  the  further  removal  of  har 
bor  obstructions.  The  building  of  dry  docks,  to  protect  the 
unused  national  navy,  was  extended  to  the  construction  of 
public  wharves  for  commerce.  And,  though  Jefferson 
had  looked  with  critical  eye  upon  the  construction  of  a 
Federal  lighthouse  in  Washington's  time,  he  now  quietly 
approved  large  appropriations  for  the  exceedingly  useful 
coast  survey,  inaugurated  in  1806.  "The  utility  of  the 
thing  has  sanctioned  the  infraction,"  he  said. 

The  excuse  for  Federal  expenditure  on  harbors  was  that  it 
was  paid  for  out  of  the  tonnage  tax  on  vessels  that  used  the 
harbors.     But,  what  harbors  were  to  Eastern  com-  .<  Internal 
munities,  roads  would  be  to  the  people  of  the  West.  improve- 
Why  should  not  the  nation  build  such  roads  and  * 
pay  for  them  out  of  the  sale  of  the  public  lands,  —  to  which 
they  would  give  value?     This  was  the  guise  under  which 
the  question  of  "internal  improvements"  first  appeared. 

When  Ohio  was  admitted  as  a  State,  in  1802,  the  national 
government  still  owned  a  vast  domain  within  the  borders  of 
the  new  commonwealth.  On  the  suggestion  of  The 
Gallatin,  Congress  promised  that  one  twentieth  of  "  National 
the  proceeds  from  the  sale  of  those  lands  should  be  I 
used  in  building  roads  from  Atlantic  rivers  to  the  Ohio  River, 
and  afterward  on  roads  within  the  State.  The  strict  con- 
structionists  excused  the  measure  as  a  bargain  between  the 
United  States  and  Ohio.  Ohio,  said  Gallatin,  could  hardly 
be  expected  to  acquiesce  in  the  nation's  retaining  title  to  the 
vast  public  domain  inside  the  State  without  some  such  sop. 
But  lands  sold  slowly,  and  in  1806  Congress  agreed  to  advance 
$30,000  (to  be  repaid  out  of  the  future  land  sales) ;  and  a 
survey  was  begun  at  once  for  "The  National  Road,"  from 
Fort  Cumberland  in  Maryland,  on  the  Potomac,  to  Wheeling 
in  western  Virginia,  on  the  upper  Ohio. 


366  JEFFERSON'S  ADMINISTRATION 

In  his  next  message  to  Congress  (December,  1806), 
Jefferson  urged  (along  with  the  suggestion  of  a  necessary 
Gaiiatin's  amendment)  a  national  university  and  a  system  of 
"  Report  internal  improvements  to  cement  the  union  between 
the  States.  Without  reference  to  the  need  of  an 
amendment,  Congress  replied  by  asking  the  executive  to  sub 
mit  a  plan  for  roads  and  canals.  This  led  to  Gaiiatin's  famous 
report  of  1808.  That  paper  sketched  a  comprehensive  system 
of  communication  to  be  built  during  a  period  of  ten  years,  at 
an  expense  of  $2,000,000  a  year.  (1)  Canals  through  Cape 
Cod,  New  Jersey,  and  other  projections  were  to  create  a 
shorter  and  safer  inside  coast  route.  (2)  A  turnpike  was  to 
run  from  Maine  to  Georgia.  And  (3)  turnpikes  were  to 
join  four  eastern  rivers  with  streams  beyond  the  mountains. 
But  at  this  moment  national  revenue  fell  away,  because  of 
the  embargo  (page  382),  and  for  some  years  all  such  projects 
were  lost  in  war  clouds. 

Pennsylvania,  alone  of  the  States,  began  to  act  vigorously 
for  herself.  In  the  six  years  after  Gaiiatin's  plan  was 
Pennsyi-  dropped  by  Congress  (1809-1815),  that  State  spent 
vania  leads  $2,000,000  on  roads,  and,  under  State  encourage 
ment,  private  corporations  spent  twice  as  much  more  on  toll 
roads.  By  1815,  a  thousand  miles  of  turnpikes,  with  good 
bridges,  linked  together  the  important  districts  of  the  com 
monwealth,  and  joined  the  eastern  waters  with  Pittsburg  on 
the  Ohio. 

Western  settlement  continued  in  the  period  1800-1810 
much  as  in  the  ten  years  preceding  but  with  much  less  peril 
Growth  of  from  Indians.  Three  distinct  waves  of  settlement 
the  West  were  noticeable,  as  for  long  after  on  frontiers. 
Backwoodsmen  opened  small  clearings,  which,  after  a  few 
years,  were  bought  out  and  enlarged  by  pioneer  farmers,  who, 
in  turn,  soon  followed  the  backwoods  hunters  farther  west, 
selling  out  their  first  homes  to  a  more  permanent  set  of  farmers 
with  more  capital. 

The  "backwoodsmen"  were  usually  "squatters."  The 
"farmers"  secured  title  from  the  Federal  government. 


GROWTH  OF  THE  WEST  367 

After  1800,  land  could  be  bought  in  160-acre  lots  at  two 
dollars  an  acre.     And  only  one  fourth  of  this  had  to  be  paid 
down  :  the  rest  could  be  paid  over  a  period  of  four  The  credit 
years,  "out  of  the  profits  of  the  crops."     In  the  8JJ]|^lfor 
ten  years  before   1800,  less  than  a  million  acres  lands, 
of  public  land  had  been  sold  to  settlers  by  the  isoo-1820 
government ;  but,  in  the  next  twenty  years,  sales  averaged  a 
million  acres  a  year,  and  the  lines  of  would-be  purchasers 


A  CONESTOGA  WAGON.     An  early  form  of  "prairie  schooner"  used  in  emigration 
from  the  coast  districts  to  the  Ohio  after  Pennsylvania  built  her  roads. 

before  Western  land  offices  suggested  the  phrase,  "doing  a 
land-office  business." 

Between  1800  and  1810,  Ohio  grew  ninefold,  —  from 
45,000  to  406,000 ;  while  24,000  people  pressed  on  into  the 
southern  districts  of  Indiana,  and  half  that  many  penetrated 
even  into  southern  Illinois.  Even  the  older  communities 
south  of  the  Ohio,  —  Kentucky  and  Tennessee,  —  doubled 
their  numbers,  rising  to  two  thirds  of  a  million.  In  1811, 
1200  flatboats  passed  the  rapids  of  the  Ohio  with  cargoes  of 
bacon,  beef,  and  flour,  bound  down  river.  The  West  had 
found  a  way,  also,  to  market  large  parts  of  its  corn  "on  the 


368 


JEFFERSON'S  ADMINISTRATION 


hoof."  Each  fall,  immense  droves  of  cattle  and  hogs 
(4000  "razor-backs"  in  one  drove)  were  driven  over  the 
wagon  roads  to  the  eastern  cities,  finding  subsistence  as  they 
moved. 

And  now  came  the  steamboat,  with  its  promise  of  making 
the  vast  western  territory  accessible.  The  Watts  stationary 
The  steam-  steam  engine  had  been  in  use  in  England  for  sev- 
boat  eral  years  and  in  1800  there  were  four  or  five  such 

engines  in  America.  But  in  this  country,  with  its  tre 
mendous  distances,  and  its  lack  of  roads,  the  first  need  was  to 
apply  steam  to  locomotion  by  water. 

As  early  as  1789,  John  Fitch,  a  poor  man  without  education 
but  with  marked  inventive  genius,  built  a  ferryboat  with 


CINCINNATI  IN  1810.     From  Howe's  Historical  Collections  of  Ohio. 

paddles  driven  by  a  steam  engine  of  his  own  construction, 
and  ran  it  up  as  well  as  down  the  river  at  Philadelphia  for 
some  months.  But  capital  was  still  timid  and  conserva 
tive  ;  and,  in  spite  of  his  remarkable  success,  Fitch  could 
not  raise  money,  east  or  west,  to  improve  or  continue  his 
experiment ;  and,  after  a  ten  years'  struggle,  he  put  an  end 
to  his  life,  in  disgust  and  despair,  in  a  Kentucky  tavern. 
During  these  same  years,  Philadelphia  had  another  neg 
lected  genius,  Oliver  Evans,  who  likewise  built  a  steam 
engine  suited  for  locomotion ;  but  again  the  inventor  failed 


GROWTH  OF  THE  WEST  369 

to  secure  money  to  finance  the  undertaking  to  practical 
success.  The  like  was  true  of  James  Rumsey  of  Virginia, 
who  possibly  preceded  even  Fitch  in  his  successful  applica 
tion  of  steam  to  water  navigation. 

Robert  Fulton  was  more  fortunate.  He  too  had  spent 
heartbreaking  years,  both  in  Europe  and  America,  in 
attempts  to  find  capital  to  back  his  invention.  Napoleon 
repulsed  him  as  a  faker  —  and  so  lost  his  chance  for  com 
mand  of  the  English  Channel  and  for  world  empire ;  but 
at  last  the  inventor  secured  money  from  Chancellor  Living 
ston  of  New  York.  In  1807,  amid  the  jeers  of  the  by 
standers,  he  launched  the  Clermont.  That  boat  amazed 
the  world  by  a  trial  trip  up  the  river  from  New  York  to 
Albany  (150  miles)  in  32  hours.  The  next  year  a  line  of 
steamboats  was  plying  regularly  on  the  Hudson,  and  men 
were  planning  them  on  Western  rivers. 


CHAPTER  XX 

TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION 
I.   THE   WESTERN   HALF   OF   THE   MISSISSIPPI   VALLEY 

THE  most  important  one  event  in  Jefferson's  administra 
tion  was  the  Louisiana  Purchase.  Jefferson  had  always 
Jefferson  sympathized  with  the  attitude  of  the  West  toward 
and  the  Spain's  hold  upon  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi 
(p.  247).  When  Jay  in  1786  had  proposed  a 
treaty  with  Spain,  whereby,  in  return  for  certain  com 
mercial  concessions,  we  were  to  surrender  for  twenty-five 
years  all  claim  to  navigate  the  Mississippi,  Jefferson  wrote 
from  Paris  in  solemn  warning,  "The  act  which  abandons 
the  navigation  of  the  Mississippi  is  an  act  of  separation  be 
tween  us  and  the  Western  country."  Man  of  peace  though 
he  was,  he  had  said  that  such  portions  of  the  vast  domain 
of  dying  Spain  as  we  wanted  must  come  to  us  in  time,  —  by 
force  if  necessary ;  but  he  had  believed  confidently  that 
such  territory  would  drop  peacefully  into  our  hands,  as 
Spain's  grasp  weakened. 

But  late  in  1801  fell  a  thunderbolt :  America  learned  that 
Spain  had  secretly  ceded  Louisiana  back  to  France,  then 
Spain  cedes  ^ne  most  aggressive  of  European  nations.  Con- 
Louisiana  gress  hastily  passed  a  war  appropriation ;  and 
1  Jefferson,  spite  of  his  French  sympathies,  saw  that 
we  must  fight 1  or  purchase.  He  instructed  Livingston, 
our  minister  at  Paris,  to  buy  the  island  of  New  Orleans, 

1  Jefferson  said  that  France  had  become  our  foe  "by  the  law  of  Nature."  He 
wrote  to  Livingston  :  "There  is  on  the  globe  one  single  spot,  the  possessor  of  which 
is  our  natural  .  .  .  enemy.  .  .  .  France,  placing  herself  in  that  door,  assumes 
to  us  an  attitude  of  defiance.  .  .  .  The  day  that  France  takes  possession  of  New 
Orleans  .  .  .  seals  the  union  of  two  nations  who,  in  conjunction,  can  maintain 
exclusive  possession  of  the  ocean.  From  that  moment  we  must  marry  ourselves 
to  the  British  fleet  and  nation." 

370 


THE  LOUISIANA  PURCHASE  371 

and  sent  Monroe,  as  special  envoy,  to  help  him.  Monroe 
found  a  great  and  unexpected  bargain  practically  com 
pleted.  Napoleon  had  suddenly  changed  front ;  and,  April 
30,  1803,  for  the  petty  price  of  $15,000,000,  the  United 
States  doubled  its  territory. 

A  splendid  army  of  twenty -five  thousand  French  veterans 
had  just  wasted  away,  against  tropical  fever  and  the  gen 
eralship  of  the  Negro  leader  Toussaint  L'Ouver- 

.  TJ    ...  ,     !„      Napoleon 

ture,  in  an  attempt  to  secure    Haiti   as   a  halt-  sells  to  the 
way  station   to   Louisiana.     Napoleon    hesitated  United 
to  send  more  of  his  soldiers  to  hold  the  swamps 
at  the  mouth  of    the  Mississippi    against   American  fron 
tiersmen  swarming  down  that  stream.     Moreover,  he  had 
already  decided    upon   a   new  war  with    England ;    and  a 
distant  colony  would  be  exposed  to  almost  certain  seizure 
by   the   English   navy.     So   he    abandoned   his    dream   of 
American  colonial  empire,  together  with  his  solemn  pledges 
to  Spain,1  and,  with  characteristic  abruptness,  forced  upon 
the  American  negotiators  not  merely  the  patch  of  ground 
they  asked  for  at  the  river's  mouth,  but  the  whole  western  half 
of  the  great  river  valley,  —  which  they  had  not  particularly 
wanted. 

The  heart  of  the  American  people  was  immediately  fired 
by  the  grand  prospect  of  expansion  opened  to  them  by  the 
Purchase;  and  Jefferson  wrote  a  few  weeks  later:-  "Ob 
jections  are  raising  to  the  eastward  [among  leaders  of  New 
England  Federalism]  to  the  vast  extent  of  our  territory,  and 
propositions  are  made  to  exchange  Louisiana,  or  a  part  of  it, 

1  Spain  had  hoped  to  find  compensation  for  Louisiana  by  interposing  France 
as  a  barrier  between  the  United  States  and  her  other  American  possessions.  Talley 
rand,  who  had  managed  the  French  negotiations  with  Spain,  played  upon  this 
string.  "The  Americans,"  he  urged,  "are  devoured  by  pride,"  and  "mean  at 
any  cost  to  rule  alone  in  the  whole  continent.  .  .  .  The  only  means  of  putting 
an  end  to  their  ambition  is  to  shut  them  up  within  the  limits  Nature  seems  to  have 
traced  for  them  [east  of  the  Mississippi].  .  .  .  Spain,  therefore,  cannot  too  quickly 
engage  the  aid  of  a  preponderating  power,  yielding  to  it  a  small  part  of  her  immense 
dominions  in  order  to  preserve  the  rest.  .  .  .  France  [mistress  of  Louisiana]  will 
be  to  her  a  wall  of  brass,  impenetrable  forever  to  the  combined  efforts  of  England 
and  America."  Finally,  a  specific  pledge  never  to  alienate  the  province  to  America 
became  part  of  the  price  France  paid. 


372  JEFFERSON'S  ADMINISTRATION 

for  the  Floridas.  But  we  shall  get  the  Floridas  without, 
and  I  would  not  give  one  inch  of  the  waters  of  the  Mississippi 
to  any  foreign  power" 

A  coterie  of  Federalist  leaders  offered  rabid  opposition 
to  the  ratification  of  the  treaty,  partly  from  hatred  of  Jeffer 
son,  but  more  from  jealous  dread  of  the  West.  They  were 
quickly  overborne ;  but  the  discussion  brought  into  promi 
nence  three  constitutional  questions. 

1.  Power  to  acquire  territory  is  not  among  the  powers  of 
Congress   enumerated   in   the   Constitution.     According  to 
The  Con-       the  "strict  construction"  theory,  the  purchase  of 
stitution        Louisiana  was  unconstitutional.     Jefferson  wanted 
power16         an  amendment  to  confirm  the  purchase.      "The 
to  acquire      executive,"    he    wrote,    "in    seizing    the   fugitive 

occurrence  which  so  much  advances  the  good 
of  their  country,  have  done  an  act  beyond  the  Consti 
tution.  The  legislature  .  .  .  risking  themselves  like  faith 
ful  servants,  must  ratify  and  pay  for  it,  and  [then]  throw 
themselves  on  the  country"  for  an  amendment,  which  should 
be  also  "an  act  of  indemnity."  But  he  found  no  one  among 
his  friends  willing  to  risk  the  precious  prize  by  the  delay 
that  must  go  with  an  attempt  at  amendment.  Such  a  move 
would  imply  that  the  purchase  was  not  fully  ratified ;  and 
meanwhile  Napoleon  might  again  change  his  mind.  So  that 
plan  was  dropped.  In  the  debates  in  Congress,  Republican 
members  adopted  frankly  the  doctrine  of  "implied  powers." 
The  right  to  acquire  territory  must  exist,  they  argued,  as  a 
result  (1)  of  the  right  to  make  treaties,  and  (2)  of  the  power 
to  make  war  and  peace. 

2.  Were  the  inhabitants  entitled  to  civil  and  political  rights? 
New  Orleans  had  a  population  of  50,000.     The  treaty  of 
civil  rights     purchase   had   promised  that  the  inhabitants  of 
of  inhab-       the  district  should  be  "incorporated  in  the  Union 
newly in        of  the  United  States"  and  admitted,  as  soon  as 
acquired        possible,  to  all  the  rights  of  citizens.      The  Feder- 
temtory        alists  based  their  opposition  to  the  treaty  mainly 
on  this  provision.     The  admission  of  a  new  member  to  "the 


THE  LOUISIANA  PURCHASE  373 

partnership  of  States,"  they  urged,  was  not  permissible 
"except  by  the  consent  of  all  the  old  partners."  This  was 
State  sovereignty  doctrine. 

But  the  Republicans  themselves  hesitated  to  carry  out 
the  promise  of  statehood  to  a  foreign  population  bitterly 
aggrieved  at  transfer  to  American  rule.  In  the  spring  of 
1804  Congress  divided  the  newly  acquired  region  into  two 
parts.  The  larger  northern  part  (almost  uninhabited) ,  styled 
the  "District  of  Louisiana,"  was  attached  to  Indiana  Terri 
tory  (page  258).  The  southern  part  was  created  TheTerri- 
"The  Territory  of  New  Orleans"  ;  but  the  govern-  tory  of  New 
ment  was  intrusted  to  a  governor,  council,  and 
judges  all  appointed  by  the  President;  and  provision  was 
made  for  jury  trial  in  capital  cases  only. 

This  was  a  denial  of  all  right  of  self-government  to  a 
highly  civilized  and  densely  settled  district.  It  seemed 
strangely  out  of  place  at  the  hand  of  Jeffersonians,  and  it 
caused  loud  outcry  in  New  Orleans.  The  Republicans  de 
fended  the  constitutionality  of  the  Act  on  the  ground  that 
the  guarantees  in  the  Constitution  applied  only  to  citizens 
of  the  States,  not  to  inhabitants  of  "territory  belonging  to 
the  United  States"  (3  below).  l 

3.    The    treaty  promised    certain   exemptions  from    tariffs 
to  French  and  Spanish  ships  in  Louisiana  ports  for  twelve 
years.        The     Constitution     requires     that     "all 
duties   shall   be  uniform   throughout   the  United  belonging  to 
States."     Was    there    a    conflict    between    these  *he  Un)ted 

.   .          Q  States" 

provisions  : 

The  answer  depends  upon  the  meaning  of  "United 
States"  in  the  clause  quoted.  That  term,  territorially,  has 
two  meanings.  To-day  we  give  it  commonly  the  larger 

1  In  1812,  after  a  bitter  struggle  in  Congress,  the  Territory  of  New  Orleans 
came  into  the  Union  as  the  State  of  Louisiana.  The  New  England  Federalists 
resisted  the  admission  furiously,  because  it  seemed  to  transfer  political  power  to 
the  South.  Josiah  Quincy,  their  leader  in  Congress,  affirmed:  "I  am  compelled 
to  declare  it  as  my  deliberate  opinion  that,  if  this  bill  passes,  the  bonds  qf  this  union 
are,  virtually,  dissolved ;  that  the  States  which  compose  it  are  free  from  their  moral  obli 
gations,  and  that,  as  it  will  be  the  right  of  all,  so  it  will  be  the  duty  of  some,  to  prepare, 
definitely,  for  a  separation:  amicably,  if  they  can;  violently,  if  they  must.  ..." 


374  TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION 

sense  in  which  it  signifies  all  the  land  under  the  government 
of  the  American  nation,  —  States,  Territories,  and  unor 
ganized  Domain.  But  the  Constitution,  certainly  in  some 
places  and  probably  in  all,  uses  the  term  to  signify  only  the 
territory  within  the  States.  Territory  not  within  a  State 
was  not  referred  to  as  "part  of  the  United  States,"  but  as 
"belonging  to  the  United  States"  (Article  IV).  In  this 
sense,  New  Orleans  was  not,  in  1803-1810,  a  part  of  the 
United  States.  For  such  "territory"  Congress  is  au 
thorized  to  make  "all  needful  rules  and  regulations." 

Almost  identical  questions  have  arisen  since,  in  connec 
tion  with  the  acquisition  of  Florida  and  the  Philippines. 
In  the  Florida  case,  the  Supreme  Court  held  that  the  ports 
of  that  newly  acquired  territory  were  not  ports  of  the  United 
States,  and  that  the  revenue  laws  of  the  United  States  did 
not  apply  there  unless  expressly  extended  by  act  of  Con 
gress.  In  the  other  case,  the  Court  upheld  a  tariff  between  the 
"insular  possessions"  and  the  rest  of  the  "United  States." 

II.   WEST  FLORIDA  AND  THE  TEXAS  CLAIM 

The  Louisiana  Purchase  gave  rise,  also,  to  the  West 
Florida  question.  Under  France,  before  1763,  Louisiana 
Louisiana  na(^  included  a  strip  of  Gulf  coast  east  of  the  Missis- 
and  West  sippi's  mouth.  But  when  France  ceded  Louisiana 
to  Spain  (1763),  England  had  already  secured  that 
strip  and  was  governing  it  as  "West  Florida'9  (from  the 
Iberville,  or  eastern  mouth  of  the  Mississippi,  to  the  Ap- 
palachicola) .  The  treaty  of  1763  between  Spain  and  Eng 
land  made  these  boundaries  plain.  Louisiana  then  com 
prised  (1)  the  vast  valley  west  of  the  Mississippi,  and 
(2)  the  island  of  New  Orleans  bounded  on  the  east  by 
the  Iberville.  In  1783  Spain  recovered  both  Louisiana 
(from  France)  and  West  Florida  (from  England.)  But  she 
did  not  reunite  them.  She  kept  the  two  provinces  under 
separate  governments  and  under  these  separate  names;  and 
in  1800  she  ceded  back  to  France  only  the  one  she  then 
called  Louisiana.  (Maps  on  page  376.) 


WEST  FLORIDA  375 

Livingston  had  been  instructed  to  get  West  Florida  if 
possible.  Now,  taking  advantage  of  the  vague  wording 
of  his  purchase  treaty,  he  set  up  the  claim  that  he 

•         «T        •    •  »   •      4.1,  •          The  United 

had  done  so  —  using  Louisiana  in  the  meaning  states 
of  forty  years  before,  in  place  of  its  meaning  for  p*1™8  West 
twenty  years  last  past.  Indeed  he  urged  the 
government  to  use  "the  favorable  moment"  to  take  pos 
session,  "even  though  a  little  force  should  be  necessary." 
Jefferson  seems  to  have  approved  the  idea.  John  Randolph, 
the  spokesman  for  the  administration  in  Congress,  declared 
we  had  bought  the  mouth  of  "the  Mobile  with  its  widely  ex 
tended  branches  ;  and  there  is  not  now  a  single  stream  of  note 
rising  within  the  United  States  and  falling  into  the  Gulf  .  .  . 
which  is  not  entirely  our  own,  the  Appal achicola  excepted." 

But  when  Napoleon  sent .  his  lieutenant,  Laussat,  to 
America  in  1803,  to  take  formal  possession  of  Louisiana 
from  Spain,  in  order  to  transfer  it  to  the  United  States,  he 
told  that  officer  plainly  that  the  eastern  boundary  was  the 
Mississippi  and  the  Iberville.  Laussat  so  told  Jefferson ; 
and  we  received  Louisiana  with  this  understanding  and  with 
out  protest.  None  the  less,  a  few  weeks  later,  Congress 
created  West  Florida  into  a  United  States  revenue  district, 
and  annexed  it  to  the  Territory  of  Mississippi.  This 
"Mobile  Act,"  however,  was  never  put  in  force.  Spain's 
protest  was  so  unanswerable  that  Jefferson  was  driven  into 
discreditable  evasions  in  trying  to  explain  his  position. 

Thus  the  matter  slumbered  six  years.     In  1808  Napoleon 
seized   Spain,   and   soon   the  Spanish   colonies  in 
America,  one  by  one,  became  independent  states.  tioninWest 
In   West   Florida   this   movement    was   managed 
by  Americans  who  had  migrated  across  the  Iber 
ville  and  formed   settlements  between  that  river  and  the 
Perdido.     In  July,  1810,  they  demanded  from  the  Spanish 
governor  a  remodeling  of  the  government.      For  Andth 
a   while  they  acted  in   harmony  with   him ;   but  seizure  by 
soon  they  issued  a  declaration  of  independence,  216  United 
and  applied  to  the  United  States  for  annexation. 
October  27,  President  Madison  ordered  the  American  gov- 


376 


THE  WEST  FLORIDA  MESS 


FRENCH  LOUISIANA  AND  SPANISH  FLORIDA,  1756."    (With  dividing  line  at  the 

Perdido.) 


ENGLISH  WEST  FLORIDA,  1773-1783.     (From  the  Mississippi  to  the  Appalachicola.) 


SPANISH  AND  AMERICAN  WEST  FLORIDA,  1783-1819.     (The  figures  show  date  of 
acquisition  by  the  United  States.) 


AND  THE  CLAIM  TO  TEXAS  377 

ernor  at  New  Orleans  to  take  military  possession  as  far 
as  to  the  Perdido,  and  Congress  then  annexed  the  district 
to  the  Territory  of  New  Orleans. 

Madison  tried  to  justify  this  robbery  of  a  friendly  power 
by  pretending  to  fear  that  England  might  seize  the  terri 
tory  if  we  did  not  (a  convenient  pretext  used  by  our  gov 
ernment  more  than  once  since  to  cover  land  grabs) ;  but, 
unhappily,  recent  research  proves  beyond  dispute  that  the 
whole  rising  had  been  inspired  from  New  Orleans  in  accord 
ance  with  instructions  from  Washington l  —  a  precedent  fol 
lowed  more  openly  once  since  by  a  more  strenuous  admin 
istration  in  its  desire  for  foreign  territory. 

As  settlement  poured  into  the  Mississippi  Territory, 
West  Florida  certainly  became  worth  far  more  to  us  than 
it  was  to  Spain.  It  lay,  a  narrow  strip,  between  us  and  our 
natural  coast  line.  It  held  the  mouths  of  our  rivers  and  the 
harbors  of  our  commerce,  while  to  Spain  it  meant  nothing 
except  the  chance  to  limit  our  power.  If  the  two  countries 
had  been  individuals,  Spain  would  have  been  morally  bound 
to  sell  at  a  fair  price ;  but  any  court  would  have  defended 
her  title,  if,  immorally,  she  insisted  upon  annoying  her 
neighbor  by  keeping  possession.  Between  two. nations,  as 
matters  went  in  that  immoral  day,  it  was  inevitable  that  we 
should  get  the  district, . —  if  not  by  fair  bargaining,  then  by 
open  force.  The  unfortunate  thing  is  that  the  actual  pro 
cedure  was  such  a  needless  and  inextricable  mixture  of 
violence  and  deceit. 

The  Texas  question  also  first  saw  the  light  in  connection 
with    the    Louisiana    Purchase.     The    boundary    between 
Louisiana  and   Mexico  had  never  been  defined,   origin  of 
Napoleon's    instructions    to    Laussat   placed    the  the  Texas 
dividing  line  at  the  Rio   Grande.     If  that  was  q 
correct,  we  had  bought  Texas.     But  Spain  protested  that 
the  proper  boundary  was  the  Sabine.     The  question  was 
complicated ;    we   cared   little   about  it  at  the  time ;    the 
territory  was  a  wilderness,  without  White  inhabitants  ex- 

1  American  Historical  Association  Reports  for  1911. 


378 


JEFFERSON'S  ADMINISTRATION 


cept  at  a  few  Spanish  missions ;  and  in  1819  we  surrendered 
all  claim  to  Texas  as  part  of  the  price  we  paid  for  East 
Florida,  which  we  were  then  buying  from  Spain. 


III.    WESTERN   EXPLORATION 

Jefferson  had  long  manifested  a  scientific  interest  in 
"delineating  the  arteries  of  the  continent."  In  1783  he  had 
urged  George  Rogers  Clark 
Jefferson's  ^o  explore  the  West 
zefci  for  to  the  Pacific  ;  and 

exploration 


while  in  France,  he  had  per 
suaded  Ledyard,  an  Ameri 
can  traveler,  to  attempt  to 
reach  the  Pacific  coast  of 
America  by  way  of  Siberia 
and  the  ocean.  There  must 
be  a  great  river,  he  argued, 
flowing  from  the  western 
mountains  into  the  Pacific, 
rising  near.  the  head  waters 
of  the  Missouri.  The  ex 
plorer  could  ascend  this 
stream  and  descend  the  Mis 
souri  to  St.  Louis. 

Ledyard  was  turned  back 
by  suspicious  Russian  offi- 
ciaims  to  cials.  But  in  1792 
Oregon  Captain  Gray  of 
Boston,  in  his  ship  Columbia, 
discovered  the  mouth  of  the 
prophesied  river,  and  named 
it  for  his  vessel.  This  was 
OUT  first  basis  for  future  claim 
to  the  Oregon  country.  As 
soon  as  Jefferson  became  President,  he  secured  from  Con 
gress  an  appropriation  for  an  exploring  expedition  to  that 


MERIWETHER  LEWIS.  From  Winsor's 
Narrative  and  Critical  History,  after  a 
contemporary  drawing  among  the  pos 
sessions  of  Captain  Clark,  Lewis'  Com 
panion.  This  is  the  only  known  like 
ness  of  the  explorer. 


•r 


9-o 


&*   OC   2      'a 
^j    M   P5       |    -g 

pin 

H 

w 


THE  LEWIS  AND  CLARK  EXPEDITION  379 

country,  to  be  led  by  Meriwether  Lewis  (Jefferson's  private 
secretary)  and  Captain  William  Clark  (a  brother  of  George 
Rogers  Clark).  Before  the  expedition  was  ready,  the  pur 
chase  of  Louisiana  made  much  of  the  territory  to  be  explored 
our  own,  and  gave  us  possessions  contiguous  to  the  un 
occupied  and  almost  unclaimed  Oregon  district. 

Lewis  and  Clark  set  out  from  St.  Louis  with  thirty-five 
men,  in  the  spring  of  1804.  Sixteen  hundred  miles  up  the 
Missouri,  near  the  modern  Bismarck,  they  wintered  among 
the  Mandan  Indians.  The  next  spring,  guided  by  the 
"Bird  Woman"  with  her  papoose  on  her  back,  they  con 
tinued  up  the  river  to  the  water  shed,  and  followed  streams 
down  the  western  slope  until  they  found  a  mighty  river. 
When  they  reached  its  mouth  in  November,  four  thousand 
miles  from  St.  Louis,  this  river  proved  to  be  Captain  Gray's 
Columbia.  This  exploration  was  the  second  basis  for  Ameri 
can  claim  to  Oregon;  and  the  scientific  observations,  maps, 
and  journals  of  the  expedition  revealed  a  vast  region  never 
before  known  to  White  men. 

In  1811  Astoria  was  founded  on  the  south  bank  of  the 
Columbia,  by  John  Jacob  Astor,  as  a  station  for  the  fur 
trade.  This  occupation  by  American  citizens  made  a  third 
basis  for  a  claim  to  the  country. 

Unhappily,  when  the  United  States  sought  to  establish 
its  claim,  a  few  years  later  (p.  406),  the  government  tried 
to  strengthen  its  case  by  holding  that  Oregon  was  part  of 
the  Louisiana  Purchase.  There  was  really  no  ground  what 
ever  for  arguing  that  "Louisiana"  ever  extended  beyond 
the  Rocky  Mountains ;  but  the  government  maps  kept 
up  the  pretense  until  1901. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

THE  WAR  OF   1812 

THE  foreign  relations  of  the  United  States  from  1806 
to  1812  were  disgraceful.  After  brief  truce,  the  European 
Foreign  war  Degan  again  in  1803,  and  the  commercial 
relations,  clauses  of  the  Jay  treaty  expired  soon  after. 

B-1812  Napoleon  was  soon  master  of  the  continent,  with 
all  the  coast  line  from  Italy  to  Denmark.  His  sole  antago 
nist,  England,  ruled  supreme  on  the  sea.  The  only  neutral 
power  with  any  shipping  interests  was  the  United  States. 
That  shipping  fattened  on  its  monopoly;  but  each  of  the 
mighty  combatants  strove  to  force  it  into  an  ally,  and  to 
prevent  its  aiding  his  foe.  English  "Order  in  Council" 
followed  French  "Decree";  and  whatever  American  ship 
ping  the  one  did  not  declare  subject  to  capture,  the  other 
did.  Meantime,  our  own  government  lacked  decision  to 
take  sides,  or  power  to  defend  its  citizens. 

The  story  is  not  a  pleasant  one.  It  is  a  tale  of  outrageous 
robbery  by  both  European  powers,  and  of  American  vacil 
lation  and  disgrace.  Jefferson  and  Madison,  great  in  peace, 
were  not  suited  for  emergencies  of  this  kind.  Well-meaning, 
gentle,  trustful,  not  particularly  decisive,  they  were  buffeted 
pitifully  back  and  forth  between  the  arrogance  and  indiffer 
ence  of  English  Pitt  and  Canning,  and  the  duplicity  and 
insolent  greed  of  French  Napoleon  and  Talleyrand. 

If  war  is  ever  justifiable  for  any  provocation  short  of 
armed  invasion,  we  had  abundant  cause  to  fight  both  coun 
tries  or  either,  at  any  time  between  1806  and  1810.  Our 
government  shilly-shallied,  in  impotent  indecision,  until 
the  energetic  part  of  the  nation  rose  wrathfully  to  demand 
that  we  fight  some  one  at  once  to  win  back  self-respect. 
Then  we  chose  the  wrong  time  and,  apparently,  the  wrong 

380 


ENGLISH  "ORDERS"  AND  FRENCH  "DECREES"      381 

foe.  Unfortunately,  too,  our  choice  of  a  foe  arrayed  us  on 
the  side  of  the  European  despot  against  the  only  hope  for 
European  freedom.  The  rise  of  Napoleon  had  reversed  the 
position  of  England  and  France,  as  compared  with  that 
of  1793.  Says  Professor  Hart  (Foundations  of  American 
Foreign  Policy,  27):  "The  United  States  waited  till  the 
European  system  .  .  .  was  on  the  point  of  falling  to  pieces 
of  its  own  weight,  and  then  made  war  on  the  power  which, 
on  the  whole,  had  done  us  the  least  harm."  To  the  same 
effect  Professor  Channing  says  (Jeffersonian  System,  200)  : 

"...  The  intention  of  the  English  government  seems  to 
have  been  to  treat  the  neutral  fairly,  to  give  him  ample  warning, 
and  to  mitigate  his  losses  by  permitting  him  to  seek  another 
destination  for  his  cargo.  The  French  administration  of  the 
decrees  was  peculiarly  harsh  and  unjust.  ...  In  short  the  French 
seemed  to  have  acted  with  the  least  consideration  for  the  rights 
of  neutrals;  but  the  English  confiscated  so  many  more  neutral 
vessels,  owing  to  the  activity  and  strength  of  their  cruisers  and 
privateers,  that  the  greater  hostility  was  aroused  against  the 
British." 

To  complicate  the  picture  further,  that  section  of  the 
country  immediately  interested  —  the  section  whose  ships 
were  being  confiscated  and  sailors  impressed  -  -  Growth  of 
did   not   want   war   at    any    time,  certainly    not  NewEng- 
with    England,    and    talked    freely   of   preferring  merce, 
secession  from  the  Union.     In   1790,  before  the  1793-isio 
wars  of   the  French  Revolution  began,  550  English  mer 
chant   ships   entered    American    harbors.     In    1799,    when 
the  first  series  of  wars  closed,  the  number  had  sunk  to 
100.     Meantime,  New  England  shipping  had  increased  five 
fold.     During  the  second  series  of  wars,  —  until  America 
itself  became  engaged,  —  American  shipping  continued  to 
absorb  the  former  English  carrying  trade  with  the  world. 
Between  1803  and  1812,  England  seized  a  thousand  Ameri 
can  merchantmen,  —  many  of  them  very  properly,  for  viola 
tions   of   recognized   principles   of   international   law ;    and 
France  captured  more  than  half  that  number,  —  the  greater 


382  THE  WAR  OF  1812 

part  treacherously,  after  inviting  them  into  continental 
harbors  by  special  proclamation.  '  But  New  England  was 
willing  to  submit  to  all  this,  and  to  the  impressment  of 
her  seamen,  rather  than  lose  her  golden  harvest  of  the  seas. 

Jefferson's  second  administration  spent  its  chief  energy 
in  trying  to  maintain  a  policy  of  commercial  non-intercourse 
The  em-  with  the  warring  powers,  in  order  to  compel  them 
bargo  of  to  respect  our  neutral  rights.  In  1807,  to  make 
the  policy  effective,  Congress  decreed  an  embargo 
upon  all  American  shipping  bound  for  foreign  ports  —  and 
no  time  limit  was  specified  in  the  law.  This  was  not  a 
measure  preparatory  to  war :  it  was  war  in  commercial 
form. 

The  embargo  caused  great  distress  among  workingmen  and 
commercial  classes  in  England,  but  those  classes  then  had  no 
voice  in  the  English  government.  The  landed  aristocracy, 
which  did  control  the  government,  in  death  grapple  with 
Napoleon,  hardened  its  heart  to  the  suffering  of  other 
Englishmen  as  an  inevitable  incident  of  the  great  war,  and 
stubbornly  refused  to  make  concessions  to  America.  Mean 
while,  the  embargo  caused  hardly  less  distress  at  home ; 
and  the  outcry  from  sailors  out  of  work,  from  shippers 
whose  vessels  lay  idle,  and  from  farmers  whose  produce 
rotted  unsold,  could  not  long  be  ignored  by  Congress.  In 
New  England,  juries  refused  to  convict  on  the  plainest 
evidence,  for  violation  of  the  embargo,  and  public  opinion 
made  it  impossible  to  enforce  the  law.  In  the  closing  days 
of  Jefferson's  presidency  it  was  repealed,  as  a  failure.  Its 
chief  result  had  been  a  revival  of  the  Federalist  party  in 
New  England. 

Jefferson  had  wished  his  lieutenant,  Madison,  to  suc 
ceed  him,  and  in  1808  Madison  was  elected  by  a  vote  of 
The  election  three  to  one.  Backed  by  the  "Old  Republicans," 
of  Madison  he  tried  still  to  preserve  peace  by  slight  modifica 
tions  of  Jefferson's  peace  policy.  But  by  1810 
real  control  had  passed  to  a  new  generation  of  statesmen, 
younger  and  more  aggressive,  led  by  Henry  Clay  of  Ken 
tucky  and  John  C.  Calhoun  of  South  Carolina.  These 


"MR.  MADISON'S  WAR"  383 

"Young  Republicans,"  or  "War  Hawks,"  finally  brought 
Madison  to  their  side.  It  was  charged  that  Madison  yielded 
to  secure  necessary  War  Hawk  support  for  his  re-  Andinl812 
election  in  1812.  Dislike  for  the  war  had  strength 
ened  the  Federalists,  but  Madison  won  by  128  votes  (from 
South  and  West)  to  89. 

The  choice  of  a  foe  was  easily  foreseen.  So  far  as  inter 
ference  with  our  commerce  was  concerned,  Napoleon  prom 
ised  to  repeal  his  "decrees"  -though  he  did  not,  Our  choice 
and  did  not  mean  to  —  while  England  refused  to  of  a  foe 
withdraw  her  "orders"  until  France  should  actually  perform 
the  promise.  But  against  England  a  large  part  of  America 
was  in  a  state  of  chronic  irritation  for  other  reasons.  In  the 
far  Northwest,  the  great  British  and  American  fur  companies 
were  fierce  and  ruthless  rivals  for  territory  and  for  control 
over  Indian  tribes.  Rumors  of  bloody  clashes  and  treacher-. 
ous  massacres  among  distant  snows  stirred  every  frontier 
community  that  sent  forth  its  trappers  into  the  wilderness, 
and  the  Western  settlements  believed,  mistakenly  but  with 
savage  earnestness,  that  every  Indian  disturbance  was 
fomented  by  British  agents.  The  West,  accordingly, 
joined  hands  with  the  monied  fur-trade  interests  in  bringing 
pressure  upon  Congress.  And  in  June  of  1812  the  United 
States  declared  war  upon  England. 

For  three  generations  Americans  held  a  tradition  that  we 
fought  the  War  of  1812  in  defense  of  "sailors'  rights"  against 
impressment.  This  is  not  a  fair  statement.  Even  The  causes 
after  war  was  determined  upon,  during  the  last  of  of  war 
1811  and  the  first  half  of  1812,  neither  the  government  nor 
newspapers  mentioned  impressments  as  a  cause.  Madison's 
message  to  Congress  recommending  a  declaration  of  war 
named  impressments  first  among  our  provocations ;  but 
never  before  had  our  government  intimated  to  England  that 
she  must  give  up  this  practice  or  fight.  Says  Henry  Adams  : 
"When  this  grievance  was  finally  taken  up,  it  was  an  after 
thought,  when  the  original  cause  failed  to  unite  and  arouse 
the  people.  If  England  had  yielded  to  our  commercial 
demands,  nothing  would  then  have  been  said  of  impress- 


384  THE  WAR  OF 

ments.  .  .  .     This  worst  of  American  grievances  took  its 
proper  place  as  a  political  maneuver." 

Curiously  enough,  just  before  our  declaration  of  war,  too 
close  for  the  fact  to  become  known  in  America,  England  did 
repeal  absolutely  all  her  objectionable  "orders"  against  our 
commerce.  An  Atlantic  cable  would  have  made  impossible 
this  blundering  into  war. 

The  War  Hawks  expected  to  end  the  war  in  one  glorious 
campaign  of  conquest.  Said  Clay,  "I  am  not  for  stopping 

indifference  a^  Que^ec>  ^ut  ^  would  take  the  whole  conti- 
to"Mr.  nent."  But  the  country,  as  a  whole,  showed 
Madison's  amazing  indifference ;  and  New  England,  in  par 
ticular,  persisted  in  looking  upon  the  struggle 
as  "Mr.  Madison's  war."  A  rich  nation  of  eight  million 
•people  could  have  put  300,000  men  into  the  field  (at  the 
ratio  of  Northern  effort  in  1865) ;  but  at  no  time  (not 
even  when  our  territory  was  invaded)  did  we  have  one 
tenth  that  force  for  effective  service,  and,  most  of  the 
time,  the  numbers  were  a  half  smaller  still,  —  spite  of 
bounties  and  other  lavish  inducements. 

Even  more  discouraging  were  the  finances.  The  govern 
ment  imposed  an  excise  and  a  stamp  duty  (hateful  to  Re 
publican  principles)  and  direct  taxes ;  but  the  States  were 
delinquent  in  payment.  When  the  government  tried  to 
borrow,  its  bonds  had  to  be  sold  at  ruinous  discount.  During 
the  three  years,  the  debt  mounted  frightfully ;  and,  toward 
the  close,  the  treasury  was  practically  bankrupt.  In  a  few 
weeks  more,  this  condition  alone  would  have  compelled  the 
United  States  to  sue  for  peace. 

In  the  first  campaigns,  the  militia  distrusted  its  inca 
pable  officers  and  behaved  badly  on  several  occasions.  In 
The  cam-  1814,  just  as  England,  freed  from  the  pressure  of 
paigns  European  war,  prepared  to  push  matters  in  Amer 
ica,  more  efficient  American  officers  came  to  the  front,  and 
we  regained  our  northern  frontier  in  two  or  three  creditable 
engagements,  like  the  Battle  of  the  Thames  (October,  1813) 
and  Lundy's  Lane  (July,  1814),  and  Perry's  notable  victory 


AMERICAN  SUCCESS  AT  SEA  385 

on  Lake  Erie.  Then,  in  1815,  after  peace  had  been  signed, 
but  before  the  fact  was  known  in  America,  Andrew  Jackson, 
with  four  thousand  Western  riflemen  (deadly  marksmen  all), 
lying  behind  cotton  bales  at  New  Orleans,  beat  off,  with 
horrible  slaughter,  a  stubborn  attack  of  five  thousand 
gallant  but  poorly  handled  English  veterans  from  Welling 
ton's  army  in  Spain  that  had  victoriously  withstood  Na 
poleon's  best  soldiers. 

On  sea,  America  did  win  renown.  True,  no  injury  to  Eng 
land's  power  was  inflicted.  England  had  a  thousand  war 
ships,  two  hundred  of  them  larger  than  any  one  of  The  war 
our  seventeen  vessels ;  and,  before  the  end  of  the  on  the  sea 
war,  every  American  warship  was  sunk  or  blocked  up  in 
harbor.  But,  meantime,  in  numerous  ship  duels  between 
well-matched  antagonists,  the  Americans  had  amazed  the 
world  by  a  series  of  remarkable  victories,  and  won  even 
from  Englishmen  the  reluctant  admission  that,  ship  for  ship 
and  gun  for  gun,  we  outsailed  and  outfought  them  on  their 
chosen  element.  England  lost  only  thirteen  ships  ;  but  her 
mortification  was  wholesome,  and  there  was  less  talk  there 
after  of  Americans  as  "degenerate"  Englishmen.  The 
American  victories  "  had  little  to  do  with  England's  power, 
but  much  to  do  with  her  manners."  Moreover,  a  really 
serious  injury  to  England's  remaining  merchant  marine  was 
inflicted  by  the  multitudes  of  American  privateers,  which 
snapped  up  ships  even  in  sight  of  the  English  coast. 
Shipping  insurance  in  England  rose  to  double  the  point  ever 
reached  before  in  all  her  wars. 

One  disgraceful  episode  of  the  war  calls  for  mention.  In 
1813  an  American  raid  burned  Toronto  (then  York),  the 
capital  of  Lswer  Canada.  A  British  force  off  our  The  raid  on 
eastern  coast  retaliated  by  a  raid  against  our  Washington 
Capital.  Five  thousand  troops  marched  triumphantly 
through  fifty  miles  of  well-populated  country,  drove  a 
large  body  of  militia  before  them  in  shameful  rout,  and 
laid  the  public  buildings  of  Washington  in  ashes. 

A  few  days  later,  an  attack  upon  Baltimore  was  repulsed 
by  the  militia.  This  was  the  occasion  for  the  poem,  "The 


386  THE  WAR  OF  1812 

Star-spangled  Banner,"  by  Francis  Scott  Key,  a  prisoner 
at  the  time  on  a  British  vessel  in  view  of  the  attack. 

In  the  negotiations  for  peace,  the  American  representa 
tives  (Gallatin,  John  Quincy  Adams,  and  Henry  Clay)  were 
The  Peace  as  superior  to  their  English  antagonists  as  the 
of  Ghent  English  army  had  at  any  time  been  to  the  Ameri 
can.  In  this  field  the  Americans  won  a  creditable  victory. 
The  Peace  of  Ghent  (December  14,  1814)  restored  our  old 
boundaries.  It  left  all  other  questions  unsettled ;  but  the 
return  of  peace  in  Europe  had  removed  the  occasion  of 
trouble. 

The  most  serious  peril  from  the  war  had  been  not  in 
England's  power  but  in  New  England's  attitude  toward  the 
Federal  union.  During  the  whole  period  from  the  acces 
sion  of  Jefferson  to  the  Peace  of  Ghent  there  had  been 
breathings  of  nullification  or  secession  in  that  section,  and 
at  three  times,  in  particular,  such  threats  had  seemed  to 
have  large  popular  support. 

1.    In  1803-1804  the  leaders  of  New  England  Federalism 

had  been  angered  and  alarmed  by  the  Louisiana  Purchase 

(which,  they  thought,  meant  an  increase  in  the 

PlotsofNew    v    ..   .     '  °      '      0         ..  i     ,1         «-ri 

England  political  power  oi  the  South),  and  the  Essex 
Junto"  l  sought  refuge  in  plots  for  secession. 
Pickering,  formerly  Washington's  Secretary  of 

War,  wrote,  after  expressing  fear  of  Jefferson  (page  334)  :  — 

"How  long  we  shall  enjoy  even  this  security,  God  only  knows; 
and  must  we  with  folded  hands  wait  the  result,  or  timely  think 
of  other  protection.  .  .  .  The  principles  of  our  Revolution  point 
to  the  remedy,  —  a  separation.  That  this  can  be  accomplished, 
and  without  spilling  one  drop  of  blood,  I  have  little  doubt"  (Letter 
to  Cabot,  January  29,  1804).  And  again  :  "If  a  separation  should 
be  deemed  proper,  the  five  New  England  States,  New  York,  and 
New  Jersey  would  naturally  be  united.  ...  I  do  not  know  one 
reflecting  New  Englander  who  is  not  anxious  for  the  Great  Event 
at  which  I  have  glanced"  (Letter  to  King,  March  4,  1804). 

1  Most  of  these  leaders  lived  in  Essex  County,  near  Boston. 


NEW  ENGLAND  AND  THE  UNION  387 

John  Quincy  Adams  broke  with  the  Federalists  at  this 
time,  and  some  years  later  he  declared  in  much  detail  his 
knowledge  of  this  plot,  of  which  he  strongly  disapproved. 
"The  plan  was  so  far  matured,"  says  Adams,  "that  it  had 
been  proposed  to  an  individual  to  allow  himself,  when  the 
time  was  ripe,  to  be  placed  at  the  head  of  the  military  move 
ments."  This  "individual"  was  Hamilton,  whom  the 
Junto  counted  on  also  to  bring  New  York  into  the  treason 
able  confederacy.  But  Hamilton  frowned  on  the  project, 
and  the  leaders  found  little  support  at  this  time  in  their 
own  State.  Thus  this  "first  Federalist  plot"  never  got 
beyond  private  letters  and  closet  conferences. 

Hamilton  wrote  with  contempt  of  the  Constitution,  - 
"  Contrary  to  all  my  expectations,  I  am  still  trying  to  prop 
that  frail  and  worthless  fabric  "  ;  and  he  agreed  that  the  "  dis 
ease  of  democracy"  was  serious  enough;  but  he  did  not 
believe  that  disunion  would  afford  a  remedy.  He  seems 
rather  to  have  looked  forward  to  a  general  convulsion, 
when  a  strong  aristocratic  government  might  be  set  up  as 
a  result  of  war.  There  is  reason  to  think  that  he  accepted 
Burr's  challenge,  soon  after,  to  the  duel  in  which  he  lost 
his  life,  only  because  he  felt  that  a  refusal  would  disqualify 
him  for  high  military  command  in  the  struggle  he  expected. 

2.    The   embargo   of    1807   prepared    the    mass    of   New 
England   people   for   desperate   measures ;     and   the   years 
1808-1809  saw  a  popular  movement  for  nullifica-  ^ewEng- 
tion.     December  27,  1808,  a  Bath  town-meeting  land's  re 
called  on  the  General  Court  of  Massachusetts  "to  S^!to 
take*  immediate   steps   for   relieving   the   people,   bargo  of 
either    by   themselves   alone   or   in   concert   with 
the    other    commercial    States."       The    meeting    then    ap 
pointed   a   "committee   of   safety  ...   to   correspond   .    .   . 
and  give  immediate  alarm,  so  that  a  regular  meeting  may  be 
called   whenever   any   infringement   of  their   [Bath's]    rights 
shall  be  committed  by  any  person  or  persons  under  color  and 
pretence  of  authority  derived  from  any  officer  of  the   United 
States.99     Other  towns  took  similar  action,  and  the  move- 


388  THE  WAR  OF  1812 

ment  spread  to  State  governments.  Governor  Trumbull 
of  Connecticut  declared  the  Embargo  Act  "unconstitutional, 
.  .  .  interfering  with  the  State  sovereignties,  and  subversive 
to  the  rights  ...  of  citizens."  He  refused  the  request  of 
Secretary  of  War  that  he  appoint  officers  to  enforce  the 
"  Nuiiifica-  Act  in  his  State ;  and  in  his  address  to  the  Con- 
tion  "  necticut  legislature  (February  23,  1809)  he  placed 

himself  on  the  precise  ground  of  the  Kentucky  Resolutions 
of  '99  :  - 

"Whenever  our  national  legislature  is  led  to  overleap  the 
prescribed  bounds  of  their  constitutional  powers,  on  the  State 
legislatures,  in  great  emergencies,  devolves  the  arduous  task,  - 
it  is  their  right,  it  becomes  their  duty,  —  to  interpose  their  protect 
ing  shield  between  the  rights  and  liberties  of  the  people  and  the 
assumed  power  of  the  General  government." 

The  legislature  of  Massachusetts,  acting  on  this  principle, 
prescribed  fine  and  imprisonment  for  officers  of  the  Union 
who  should  try  to  enforce  the  law  in  that  State.  Open 
conflict  was  avoided,  and  this  second  series  of  plots  was 
closed,  only  when  the  Federal  government  surrendered  and 
repealed  the  Embargo. 

3.  The  third  distinct  period  of  New  England  opposition 
ran  through  the  three  years  of  foreign  war.  For  1812-1813, 
NewEng-  a  ^ew  details  must  suffice.  (1)  By  unlawful  and 
land  and  treasonable,  but  highly  profitable,  trade,  New  England 
merchants  and  farmers  fed  the  British  army  in 
Canada.  At  one  time  the  British  commander  there  wrote 
to  his  home  government,—  :<Two  thirds  of  the  army  are 
at  this  moment  eating  beef  provided  by  American  con 
tractors."  (2)  New  England  Representatives  in  Congress, 
with  the  full  approval  of  their  constituents,  used  every 
effort  to  defeat  the  bills  to  fill  up  the  ranks  of  the  depleted 
army.  When  a  bill  was  under  consideration  to  permit 
minors  over  eighteen  to  enlist,  Quincy  of  Massachusetts 
exclaimed:—  "It  must  never  be  forgotten  .  .  .  that  these 
United  States  form  a  political  association  of  independent 
sovereignties.  .  .  .  Pass  this  bill,  and  if  the  legislatures 


SEDITION  IN  NEW  ENGLAND  389 

of  the  injured  States  do  not  come  down  on  your  re 
cruiting  officers  with  the  old  laws  against  kidnapping  and 
man  stealing,  they  are  false  to  themselves  .  .  .  and  their 
country."  (3)  The  militia  refused  to  obey  the  call  of  the 
President.  In  1812  Madison,  as  authorized  by  Congress, 
called  on  the  State  governors  to  order  out  the  militia  to  repel 
expected  invasion  of  their  own  coasts.  The  governor  of 
Massachusetts  declared  that  neither  invasion  nor  insur 
rection  existed  (Constitution,  Art.  I,  sec.  8) ;  and  the  Su 
preme  Court  of  the  State  assured  him  that  it  belonged  to 
him,  rather  than  to  President  and  Congress,  to  decide 
whether  the  summons  was  constitutional.  Vermont  then 
recalled  her  militia  from  service. 

In  the  closing  year  of  the  war,  matters  grew  still  more 
serious.  The  defeat  of  Napoleon  had  freed  England's 
hands  for  more  vigorous  action  against  America,  Sedition 
and  this  condition  encouraged  New  England  Feder-  m  New 
alists  to  enter  on  a  definite  movement  for  se-  England 
cession.  The  first  step  was  to  have  town  meetings 
petition  the  Massachusetts  General  Court  to  secure  a  sepa 
rate  peace  for  that  State.  As  early  as  June  29,  1812,  a 
Gloucester  meeting  voted:  "If  a  destruction  of  our  com 
merce  and  fisheries  are  the  terms  on  which  a  confederation 
of  the  States  (!)  is  to  be  supported,  the  Union  will  be  to 
us  a  thread,  and  the  sooner  it  is  severed,  the  better. 
.  .  .  We  view  the  salvation  of  our  country  as  placed 
in  the  hands  of  the  commercial  States,  and  to  them  we 
pledge  our  lives,  our  fortunes,  and  everything  we  hold  dear 
in  time."  In  January,  1813,  an  Essex  county  address  to 
the  Massachusetts  legislature  ran:  "We  remember  the  re 
sistance  of  our  fathers  to  oppressions  which  dwindle  into 
insignificance  compared  to  those  we  are  called  on  to  endure 
[at  the  hands  of  the  United  States  government,  this  means] 
.  .  .  and  we  pledge  to  you  .  .  .  our  lives  and  property  in 
support  of  whatever  measure  the  dignities  and  liberties  of 
this  free,  sovereign,  and  independent  State  may  seem  to  your 
wisdom  to  demand."  A  typical  address  from  Amherst  in 
January  of  1814  (Noah  Webster  presiding)  pledged  to  the 


390  NEW  ENGLAND  AND  THE  WAR 

Massachusetts  legislature  the  support  of  the  town  in  any 
measures  the  legislature  should  see  fit  to  adopt  to  restore 
peace,  "either  alone  or  in  conjunction  with  neighboring  States.'9 

The  legislature  referred  such  addresses  to  a  special  com 
mittee.  This  committee  advised  a  convention  of  the  New 
The  England  States.  The  legislature,  however,  put 

Hartford  the  matter  over  to  the  next  General  Court,  which 
would  "come  from  the  people  still  more  fully 
possessed  of  their  views  and  wishes."  The  new  legisla 
ture  resulting  from  this  "referendum"  called  the  Hartford 
Convention  and  appointed  delegates.  Connecticut  and  Rhode 
Island  joined  the  movement,  and  New  Hampshire  and  Ver 
mont  were  represented  at  the  meeting  in  irregular  fashion, 
by  delegates  chosen  in  county  meetings. 

Extreme  Federalist  leaders  made  no  secret  of  their  hope 
that  the  Convention  would  form  a  new  confederacy  of 
northern  States.  Gouverneur  Morris  wrote  exultantly  to  a 
member  of  Congress:—  "I  care  nothing  more  for  your 
actings  and  doings.  Your  decrees  of  conscriptions  and  your 
levy  of  contributions  are  alike  indifferent  to  one  whose  eyes 
are  fixed  on  a  star  in  the  East,  which  he  believes  to  be  the 
dayspring  of  freedom  and  glory.  The  *  traitors  and  mad 
men'  assembled  at  Hartford  will,  I  believe,  if  not  too  tame 
and  timid,  be  hailed  hereafter  as  the  patriots  and  sages  of 
their  day."  Pickering,  with  equal  delight,  wrote,  "I  do 
not  expect  to  see  a  single  representative  from  the  Eastern 
States  in  the  next  Congress" ;  and  he  advised  the  Massachu 
setts  government  to  seize  the  Federal  custom-houses  and  revenues 
within  her  borders  at  once,  and  prepare  for  her  own  defense 
against  either  England  or  the  United  States.  The  Boston 
Centinel  (September  12)  announced  that  the  old  Union  was 
practically  dissolved ;  and,  November  9,  with  plain  refer 
ence  to  the  Boston  Chronicle's  famous  illustration  of  1788 
[page  297],  it  announced  that  the  second  and  the  third 
"pillars  of  a  new  Federal  Edifice"  had  been  reared,  - 
alluding  to  the  fact  that  Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island  had 
followed  Massachusetts  in  choosing  delegates  to  the  Hart 
ford  Convention.  January  15,  1815,  the  Boston  Gazette 


THE  HARTFORD  CONVENTION 


391 


SECOND  PILLAR 

Of  a  nnv  FEDERAL  £  DIP  ICE  reared. 

LEGISLATURE  Of-'  COA'.VSCTlt'Ur. 
ItAtTfOBO. 


ov.  ?.     The  joint  Committee 


Men>urat,(Li, 


.  \RTFonn,  NOV.    .          e   ont      ommttee          ,,, 
of  the  Legislature  of  this  Stafc  to  whom  was  j  ,|,'.t,  t','',; 
referred  the  communication  from  the  Govern-  |  r.itrht,  \>  .- 
or  of  Massachusetts,,  have  reported  at  much  j  [>!»<•»-.    'i 


,,  ore    a    muc       >»»-. 

gth  and  with  great  ability    on   the  subjects  I  *'«•  can* 
connected  with  the  objects  of  their  mission,  j  ^*"  Haker 


Jengt 


In  conclusion  the  Committee  sa 
"  In  whnt  manner  the  niulti.lie 
fe?I  wilTear.  are  to  be  remedie 


is  a  qtie 


The  da 


milled  by  H;«  K.xcol' 
iod  of  can 


nmci 

t!ie  Uovenvor  of  Massachusetts,  pros 
ion  of  the  Committee,  an  el'jpble  me 
wr  the  wisdom  of  rft-w-Kng-lmJ,  in  urvi.Miitf,  on  full 
consultation,  a  proper  course  to  be  adopted,  consis 
tent  \vitU  our  obligations  to'tlte  United  Suites," 

They  therefore  rc.corrtmeiV),  that  -Seven  Del 
egates  from  this  State  be  appointed  to  meet 
the  Delegates  from  thcComraonwealth  of  Mas 
sachusetts,  and  of  any  other  of  the  New-Knjj- 
land  States,  ?t  Hartford  on  (he  15th  Decem 
ber,  to  confer  with  them  on  the  subjects  pro- 
j  posed  by  a  Resolution  of  said  Comtnonvfealth, 
\  and  upon  any  other  subjects  which  may  come 
belorc  them,  for  the   purpose  of  devising  and 
I  recommending;  such  measures  for  the  safety 
i  and   welfare  of  those  States,  as  mav  t  ons'tt 


-pilot  t 


j  with  onr  obligations  as  members  of  the  na- 
f  tional  Union.  T';is  report  has  been  adopted  in 
j  both  Houses,  and -the  following  persons  have 
:  bsen  appointed  Delegates  : — 

IKs  Honor  CIIAfNTCKY  COODHIOH, 
,  HO-J.  .IAMKS  HILLHOfSK, 

Mr.\.  JOHN'  TUF.AmVEi.l., 

Hon.  7.\\V\{  \\UI1  SWIFT, 

Ilkin.  X ATM  \X!KI,  SMITH, 
Hon.  C\LVI\  GODDAUi). 
I!on.  IlOr.F.lt  M.  SIIEKMAV. 

TJIIRt)  1MLLAR  RAISED. 

j.r.ni.'iL.  ITCH  .'-_y.  RiiortE.rsL.i*vi). 
pjfovioy,xc»:,*ov.5.    Oa  Tuesday  th,-  Le- 

j  ^ isbtrjrc  of  thik  St-»te   convened  in  this  towif. 

i  His  E>:cellc<<cy  Governor  JONES  the  same  day  ] 
s?Tit  them  a  message,  c'mtuininj^  srn  able,  ir1- 
Jcpendcnt  and  intelligent  dcvcloptnient  of  the 
'.ituation  of  Uie  National  and  State  afT.urs,  and 
vorrnnM!virJv?f:'i  10  them  thc'injpaitant  Kcsuiu- 
:i(i<is  ?:u!  Coirt»nnnicati«>«s  of  the  (iovfruor  and 
Legislature  cf  MussachiuctU,  'on  the  subpct 


u,  N.  C. 
the  H 
<;l.  K.  S 


PHOTOGRAPH  OF  PARTS  OF  Two  COLUMNS  OF  THE  Boston  Centinel  FOR  NOVEMBER  9, 
1814.  The  second  column  shows  the  New  England  pride  in  the  achievements 
of  the  New  England  privateers  in  marked  contrast  with  the  ill-veiled  delight 
at  the  reverses  of  the  American  land  army  elsewhere  shown  in  the  same  paper. 


advised  Madison  to  get  a  faster  horse  than  he  had  when  he 
fled  from  Washington  before  the  British  raid,-  "or  the 
swift  vengeance  of  New  England  will  overtake  the  wretched 
miscreant  in  his  flight." 


392  NEW  ENGLAND  AND  THE  WAR 

The  Hartford  Convention  met  December  15,  1814,  and 
remained  in  session  one  month.  It  talked  State  sovereignty 
and  nullification.  It  blustered  and  threatened.  As  an 
ultimatum,  it  demanded  amendments  to  the  Constitution 
(which  would  have  rendered  the  government  impotent  in  a 
crisis)  and  the  immediate  surrender  to  the  States  of  control 
over  their  own  troops  and  taxes  (which  would  have  been  a 
virtual  dissolution  of  the  Union).  All  its  words  and  acts 
pointed  to  secession  ;  but  it  did  not  take  up  the  matter  of  actual 
separation.  Instead,  it  provided  for  a  new  convention, 
to  be  held  a  little  later,  and  adjourned  to  give  time  for  the 
New  England  States  to  negotiate  further  with  the  govern 
ment  at  Washington. 

Then  the  unexpected  announcement  of  peace  brought 
the  whole  movement  to  an  ignominious  collapse.  The  new 
And  the  spirit  of  nationalism,  which  at  once  swept  over  the 
Peace  country,  buried  the  Federalist  party  and  drove  the 

old  New  England  leaders  from  public  life.  The  rest  of  their 
years  they  spent  in  explaining  to  an  indifferent  world  that 
they  had  not  meant  anything  anyway.  The  peculiar  mean 
ness  of  their  disunion  movement  lay  in  the  fact  that  it 
was  a  stab  in  the  back  to  the  Nation  already  engaged  in 
desperate  foreign  war. 


PAET  VII  — A  NEW  AMEKIOANISM,  1815-1830 
CHAPTER   XXII 

A  THIRD    "WEST" 

The  war  originated   in   blunder.     It  cost   two   hundred 
millions  of   dollars  and  thirty   thousand   lives  —  -  New  im_ 
besides  the  incalculable  waste  and  agony  that  go  pulses  to 
with  war.     It  was  conducted  discreditably.     And  NationaUsm 
it  was  ended  without  mention  of  the  questions  that  caused 
it.     Still  it  did  give  a  new  impulse  to  Nationalism  and  to 
Americanism. 

For  a  while  there  had  seemed  serious  danger  that  American 
frontiers  might  be  curtailed.  All  the  more  buoyantly  the 
spirits  of  the  people  rebounded  into  extravagant  self- 
confidence  at  the  boast,  -  "Not  an  inch  of  territory  ceded 
or  lost."  The  popular  imagination  forgot  shames  and  fail 
ures,  and  found  material  for  self-glorification  even  in  the 
campaigns.  Once  more  we  had  "whipped  England."  In 
the  years  that  followed,  this  exuberant  Americanism  was 
to  be  a  mighty  factor  in  the  eager  occupation  of  wild 
territory ;  in  attempts  to  extend  that  territory ;  and  in 
warning  Europe  to  keep  hands  off  this  hemisphere.  The 
years  just  after  the  war  saw  the  "West"  made  over  and 
greatly  extended.  (1)  War- wearied  Europe  poured  emi 
grants  upon  our  shores  as  never  before,  and  our  own  people 
sought  eagerly  a  refuge  in  the  farm  lands  of  the  West  and 
"Lower  South"  from  the  demoralized  industries  of  the 
older  sections.  (2)  These  new  homeseekers  found  homes 
readily,  because  the  war  extinguished  Indian  title  to  vast 
tracts  never  before  open  to  settlement,  and  because  the 
government  now  adopted  a  land  policy  more  liberal  even 
than  that  of  1800.  And  (3)  there  appeared  new  facilities  for 


394  MAKING  THE  THIRD  "WEST" 

transporting  the  new  home  seekers  to  the  land  of  new  homes 
-  in  an  advance  in  steam  navigation  and  in  a  new  era  of 
road  building. 

1.  Immigration  from  Europe  had  been  fairly  uniform  from 
the  Revolution   to   the  War  of   1812,  —  some  four  or  five 

thousand  a  year.     In  1817   the  number  of  immi 
grants  rose  at  a  bound  to  22,000 ;    and  the  fifteen 
years,  1816-1830,  brought  us  a  half-million,1  —  mainly  from 
Ireland,  England,  and  Germany.     Most  of  these  newcomers 
found  their  way  at  once  to  new  lands  in  the  West. 

This  westward  stream  was  tremendously  augmented  by  the 

general  demoralization  of  industry  in  the  Atlantic  districts. 

Return  of  peace  in  Europe  put  an  end  to  New 

seekers         England's  monopoly  of  the  world's  carrying  trade. 

from  the        At  the  same  time  the  new  manufactures,  which 

demoralized    had  been    buijt   up    whije    the   wap    shut    Qut    Eng_ 

lish  goods,  were  exposed  to  ruinous  foreign  com 
petition.  In  the  South,  the  great  planters  had  been 
declining  in  wealth  for  a  generation ;  and  the  six  years  of 
embargo  and  war,  with  no  market  for  tobacco  or  cotton, 
had  hastened  their  ruin.2  "Bad  times"  always  turn  at 
tention  to  Western  farms ;  and  whole  populations  in  sea 
board  districts  were  seized  now  with  "the  Ohio  fever." 
"Old  America  seems  to  be  breaking  up  and  moving  west 
ward,"  wrote  Morris  Birkbeck  in  1817,  while  journeying 
on  the  National  Road.  "We  are  seldom  out  of  sight,  as  we 
travel  this  grand  track  toward  the  Ohio,  of  family  groups 
behind  or  before  us." 

2.  The  Indian  campaigns,  in  the  long  run,  proved  the  most 
important  part  of  the  War  of  1812.     Just  before  war  with 

England  began,  Tecumthe,  a  notable  organizer  and 

patriot,  united  all  the  tribes  of  the  West  into  a 

formidable  confederacy  to  resist  White  advance.     General 

1  The  next  sixteen  years  brought  twice  as  many ;  and  then  the  Irish  famine 
sent  us  a  million  from  Ireland  alone  in  four  years. 

2  Jefferson  and  Monroe  were  almost  in  a  state  of  poverty  before  their  death, 
and  Madison's  fortune  was    seriously    reduced.      Jefferson's    home,    Monticello, 
with  200  acres  of  land,  sold  for  $2500,  in  1829. 


NEW  LAND  AND  THE  STEAMBOAT  395 

Harrison  attacked  and  defeated  Tecumthe's  forces  at  Tippe- 
canoe,  a  tributary  of  the  Wabash  River  (November,  1811), 
while  that  chieftain  was  absent  among  the  Southern  Indians. 
In  1812  the  struggle  merged  in  the  larger  war.  The  Battle 
of  the  Thames  takes  its  chief  importance  from  the  death  there 
of  Tecumthe ;  and  the  Battle  of  Horseshoe  Bend  (in  the 
winter  of  1814),  where  Andrew  Jackson  crushed  the  Southern 
Indians,  meant  far  more  for  American  development  than 
the  victory  at  New  Orleans.  When  conflict  was  over, 
treaties  with  the  conquered  Indians  opened  to  White  settle 
ment  much  of  Georgia,  most  of  Alabama  and  Mississippi,  all 
of  Missouri,  and  half  of  Indiana,  Illinois,  and  Michigan. 

The  credit  system  of  land  sales  (page  367)  had  not  worked 
well.  Optimistic  pioneers  had  bought  large  amounts  of 
land  with  all  their  ready  cash,  and  had  then  found  them 
selves  unable  to  make  the  later  payments.  In  1820  Con 
gress  abolished  the  plan,  but  began  to  offer  80-acre  lots  at 
Si. 25  an  acre.  One  hundred  dollars  would  now  secure  full 
title  to  a  farm.  Settlers  who  had  previously  made  some 
payments  on  the  credit  plan  were  given  full  title  to  as  many 
acres  as  they  had  paid  for  at  this  new  rate. 

3.  In  1811  the  steamboat  Orleans  was  launched  on  the 
Ohio  at  Pittsburg;  and  after  the  war,  steam  navigation 
quickly  became  the  chief  means  of  travel  in  the  Develop_ 
West.  In  1818  W alk-in-the-W ater  was  launched  mentofthe 
on  Lake  Erie.  Two  years  later,  sixty  steamers  s 
plied  on  the  Ohio  and  Mississippi,  and  others  were  find 
ing  their  way  up  the  muddy  waters  of  the  Missouri,  be 
tween  herds  of  grazing  buffalo.  It  now  took  only  five 
days  to  go  from  St.  Louis  to  New  Orleans,  and  two 
weeks  to  return.  A  steamboat  could  be  built  anywhere 
on  the  banks  of  a  river,  out  of  timber  sawed  on  the 
spot.  At  first,  engine  and  boilers  had  to  be  transported 
from  the  East;  but  soon  they  began  to  be  manufactured  at 
Pittsburg,  whence  they  could  be  shipped  by  water.  The 
woods  on  the  banks  supplied  fuel.  Some  of  these  vessels 
were  "floating  palaces"  for  that  day,  —  "fairy  structures 


396 


MAKING  THE  THIRD  "WEST" 


of  Oriental  gorgeousness  and  splendor,"  exclaims  one  ex 
ultant  Westerner,-  "rushing  down  the  Mississippi  as  on 
the  wings  of  the  wind,  or  plowing  up  between  the  forests 
and  walking  against  the  mighty  current  as  things  of  life; 
bearing  speculators,  merchants,  dandies,  fine  ladies  .  .  . 
with  pianos,  novels,  cards,  dice,  and  flirting,  and  love  mak 
ing,  and  drinking ;  and,  on  the  deck,  three  hundred  fellows, 
perhaps,  who  have  seen  alligators  and  fear  neither  gun 
powder  nor  whisky." 

The  flatboats  and  rafts  still  swarmed  out  upon  the  great 
rivers  from  every  tributary,  and  made  a  somber  contrast 
to  this  picture.  A  flatboat  was  manned  by  a  crew  of  six 
to  twelve  men.  A  journey  from  Louisville  to  New  Orleans 


THE  NATIONAL  ROAD. 

took  six  months.  Many  boats  did  not  go  so  far.  When 
ever  the  cargo  was  sold  out,  the  boat  itself  was  broken  up 
and  sold  for  lumber ;  and  the  crew  returned  home  by  steamer 
—  instead  of  on  foot  as  in  1800.  In  1830  a  traveler  on  the 
Mississippi  saw  ten  or  twelve  such  boats  at  every  village  he 
passed.  Flatboatmen,  raftsmen,  and  the  deckhands  of  the 
great  steamers  made,  as  Dr.  Turner  says,  "a  turbulent  and 
reckless  population,  living  on  the  country  through  which 
they  passed,  fighting  and  drinking  in  true  'half-horse,  half- 
alligator'  style." 

Only  twenty  miles  of  the  National  Road  (page  365)  were 
completed  at  the  close  of  the  war ;  but  in  1816  it  received  an 
The  appropriation  of  $300,000,  followed  by  others  as 

National        fast  as  they  could  be  used.     By  1820,  with  a  cost  of 
a  million  and  a  half,  it  reached  Wheeling,  on  the 
upper  Ohio  waters.     Thence,  at  a  total  cost  of  nearly  seven 


INTERNAL  IMPROVEMENTS  397 

millions  (carried  by  thirty-four  appropriations  from  Con 
gress),  it  was  pushed  on  to  Columbus,  Indianapolis,  and 
finally  to  Vandalia  (then  capital  of  Illinois). 

From  the  lower  waters  of  the  Potomac  almost  to  the  Mis 
sissippi,  crossing  six  States,  this  noble  highway  with  its 
white  milestones  spanned  the  continent  in  a  long  band, 
bridging  streams  on  magnificent  stone  arches,  and  cutting 
through  lines  of  hills  on  easy  grades.  The  eastern  part  was 
formed  of  crushed  stone  on  a  thoroughly  prepared  founda 
tion  ;  the  western  portion  was  more  roughly  macadamized. 
In  1856  (after  railroads  had  superseded  such  means  of 
transit  in  importance)  Congress  turned  the  road  over  to 
the  various  States  in  which  it  lay. 

The  cost  of  the  road  —  even  the  early  cost  of  that 
part  east  of  Ohio  —  far  exceeded  the  original  "five  per 
cent  fund "  from  Ohio  lands.  The  road  was  a  true 
national  undertaking,  paid  for  by  national  revenues. 
The  fiction  of  merely  "advancing  funds"  was  long 
kept  up,  however,  to  dodge  constitutional  objections ; 
and  the  consent  of  each  State  through  which  the  road 
passed  was  asked  and  obtained. 

For  a  time  it  was  expected  that  the  government  would 
build    other    great  lines  of  communication.     The  military 
need  for  good  roads  had  been  felt  keenly  during  the 
war  —  when  at  critical  times  it  had  been  almost  tion  of 
impossible  to  move  troops  or  supplies.     The  West-  internal  im- 

,  •         £  ,-         i      •  i      provements 

erners,  too,  were  clamoring  for  more  national  aid, 
and  their  votes  in  Congress  were  gaining  weight.  More 
over,  at  the  peace  (with  the  renewal  of  the  import  trade) 
the  national  revenues  became  abundant.  In  1815  they 
rose  at  a  bound  from  11  to  47  millions  of  dollars.  Madi 
son's  administration  now  abandoned  the  old  Jeffersonian 
policy  of  keeping  down  the  army  and  navy,  and  in  1816 
raised  its  estimate  of  annual  expenditure  to  27  millions: 
but,  even  so,  a  large  surplus  was  piling  up  in  the  treasury. 
The  Message  to  Congress  in  December,  1816,  renewed 
Jefferson's  suggestion  for  a  Constitutional  amendment  to 


398  MAKING  THE  THIRD  "WEST" 

permit  the  use  of  this  surplus  in  a  "comprehensive  system  of 
roads  and  canals  .  .  .  such  as  will  have  the  effect  of  drawing 
And  more  closely  together  every  part  of  our  country"  and 

national  of  increasing  "the  share  of  every  part  in  the  com 
mon  stock  of  national  prosperity."  Congress  ig 
nored  the  suggestion  for  amendment,  but  provided  funds  for 
immediate  use.  The  charter  of  the  first  National  Bank  had 
expired  in  1811,  and  Republican  opposition  had  prevented  a 
renewal  at  that  time.  But,  in  1816,  the  new  Nationalism  dis 
regarded  former  scruples.  An  act  for  a  new  National  Bank 
had  been  championed  especially  by  Calhoun  and  Clay.  It 
had  received  almost  a  unanimous  vote,  and  had  been  ap 
proved  by  the  President.  One  provision  of  the  bill  gave  the 
government  a  "bonus"  of  $1,500,000  (for  the  special  privi- 
Caihoun's  leges  of  the  charter),  besides  certain  shares  in 
"Bonus  future  dividends.  Now  Calhoun' s  "Bonus  Bill" 
sought  to  pledge  these  funds  to  the  construction  of 
roads  and  canals.  Calhoun  urged  his  bill  on  broad  grounds, 
finding  sanction  for  it  even  in  the  "general  welfare"  clause. 

"  Let  it  never  be  forgotten,"  he  exclaimed,  "  that  [the  extent 
of  our  republic]  exposes  us  to  the  greatest  of  all  calamities,  next 
to  the  loss  of  liberty  itself  (and  even  to  that,  in  its  consequences), 
—  disunion.  We  are  greatly  and  rapidly  —  I  was  about  to  say, 
fearfully  —  growing.  This  is  our  pride  and  our  danger ;  our 
weakness  and  our  strength.  .  .  .  We  are  under  the  most  im 
perious  obligation  to  counteract  every  tendency  to  disunion.  .  .  . 
If  we  permit  a  low,  sordid,  selfish  sectional  spirit  to  take  possession 
of  this  House,  this  happy  scene  will  vanish.  We  will  divide ;  and, 
in  consequence,  will  follow  misery  and  despotism.  Let  us  con 
quer  space.  .  .  .  The  mails  and  the  press  are  the  nerves  of  the 
body  politic." 

To  the  savage  disappointment  of  the  Young  Republicans, 
Madison  vetoed  the  bill  in  a  message  that  returned  to  the 
And  Jeffersonian  doctrine  of  strict  construction.  He 

Madison's     expressed  sympathy  with  the  purpose  of  the  act, 
but    insisted    that   a   Constitutional    amendment 
must  be  secured.     The  next  year,  under  President  Monroe, 
Congress  renewed  its  effort  for  national  aid  to  roads.     But 


ROUTES  AND  TRANSPORTATION  399 

Monroe,  in  his  inaugural  and  in  his  one  veto,  took  Madison's 
ground.  The  enraged  Congress  retorted  with  bitter  resolu 
tions  condemning  the  President's  position,  but  it  did  not 
venture  to  challenge  more  vetoes  or  to  make  trial  of  the 
dubious  process  of  Constitutional  amendment. 

For  a  time,  therefore,  the  only  routes  from  the  seaboard 
to  the  West  were  the  National  Road  and  the  Ohio  —  that 
river  having  been  reached  either  by  the  National  The  routes 
Road  at  Wheeling  or  by  the  Pennsylvania  turn-  to  the  West 
pike  from  Philadelphia  to  Pittsburg.     But  soon  two  other 
routes  were  added. 

(1)  Planters  abandoned  the  "worn-out"  tobacco  lands  of 
Virginia   and  North   Carolina  for  the   "cotton  belt,"    -a 
broad  sweep  of  black  alluvial  soil  running  through  South 
Carolina,  Georgia,  Alabama,  and  Mississippi,  between  the 
coast  and  the  pine  barrens  of  the  foothills.     To  even  the 
distant  parts   of   this   region   they   found   access  by   land, 
through  central  Georgia,  with  their  caravans  of  slaves  and 
goods.     Dr.  Turner  has  pictured  graphically  the  contrast  be 
tween  the  migration  into  Northwest  and  Southwest :    here, 
the  pioneer  farmer,  bearing  family  and  household  goods  in 
a  canvas-covered  wagon ;    there,   the    aristocratic,    gloved 
planter,  in  family  carriage,  attended  by  servants,  packs  of 
hunting  dogs,  and  train  of  slaves,  their  nightly  The  Lower 
campfires   lighting  up  the  wilderness.      Thus  the  South 
Lower  South  came  into  being ;   and  the  new  aristocracy  of 
the  black  belt  soon  took  to  itself  the  leadership  in  Southern 
politics  so  long  held  by  Virginia. 

(2)  Each  year  the  Wilderness  Road  (now  improved  into  a 
wagon  track)  bore  a  large  immigration  from  Virginia  into 
Kentucky.     Part  of  this  colonization  passed  on  across  the 
lower  Ohio  into  southern  Indiana  and  Illinois,  or  across  the 
Mississippi  into  Missouri.     Another  part   moved   through 
Tennessee  down  the  bank  of  trie  Mississippi  to  the  cotton 
belt,  to  meet  the  stream  of  immigration  there  from  the  East. 

This  double  movement  through  Kentucky  (as  Dr.  Turner 
reminds  us),  with  many  other  features  of  Western  life,  is 


400  MAKING  THE  THIRD  "WEST" 

illustrated  by  the  families  of  Abraham  Lincoln  and  Jefferson 
Davis.  The  two  boys  were  born  near  one  another  in  Ken- 
Two  West-  tucky  in  1809  and  1808.  The  Davis  family  soon 
era  types  moved  on  to  Louisiana  and  then  to  Mississippi,  had 
its  part  under  Jackson  in  the  War  of  1812,  and  became  typi 
cal  planters  of  the  black  belt.  In  1810  Thomas  Lincoln,  a 
rather  shiftless  carpenter,  rafted  his  family  across  the  Ohio, 
with  his  kit  of  tools  and  several  hundred  gallons  of  whisky, 
to  settle  in  southern  Indiana.  For  a  year  the  family 
shelter  was  a  "three-faced  camp"  (a  shed  of  poles  open 
on  one  side  except  for  hanging  skins  or  canvas)  ;  and  for 
some  years  more  the  home  was  a  one-room  log  cabin  with 
out  floor  or  window.  As  in  most  houses  of  the  kind,  the 
floor,  when  it  came,  was  made  of  logs  split  in  halves  and 


Abraham  backs  down.      When  Abraham  Lincoln 

Lincoln's  was  a  raw-boned  youth  of  six  feet  four,  with 
blue  shinbones  showing  between  the  tops  of  his 
socks  and  the  bottom  of  his  trousers,  the  family  removed 
again,  to  Illinois.  Abraham,  now  twenty-one,  after  clearing 
a  piece  of  land  for  his  father,  set  up  for  himself.  He  had 
had  very  few  weeks  of  schooling;  but  he  had  been  fond  of 
practicing  himself  in  speaking  and  writing  clearly  and 
forcefully,  and  he  knew  well  five  or  six  good  books  —  the 
only  books  of  any  sort  that  had  chanced  in  his  way.  After 
this  date,  he  walked  six  miles  and  back  one  evening  to  borrow 
an  English  grammar,  and  was  overjoyed  at  finding  it.  He 
was  scrupulously  honest  and  fair  in  all  dealings,  and  intel 
lectually  honest  with  himself,  —  and  champion  wrestler 
among  the  neighborhood  bullies.  He  made  a  flatboat 
voyage  to  New  Orleans  ;  clerked  in  a  country  store,  where 
he  was  the  best  story-teller  among  the  loose-mouthed  loafers 
who  gathered  there  ;  studied  law,  and  went  into  politics,  - 
finally  to  meet  his  childhood  neighbor,  Jefferson  Davis,  in 
new  relations. 

Shortly  before  1830,  a  yet  more  important  road  was  opened 
to  the  West.  Thinkers  had  long  seen  the  possibility  of 
water  communication  between  the  Atlantic  and  the  Lakes, 


ROUTES  AND  TRANSPORTATION  401 

by  way  of  the  Hudson  and  a  canal  along  the  Mohawk  valley. 
Gallatin's  plan  of  1808  included  such  a  canal  at  national 
expense ;  and  in  1816  and  1817  the  Congressional  The  Erie 
plans  for  internal  improvements,  with  this  as  one  Canal 
object,   failed    only    because    of    Madison's   and    Monroe's 
unexpected    vetoes.      Since    national    aid    had    proved    a 
delusion,   De  Witt   Clinton,   governor  of  New  York,   now 
persuaded  the  State  to  take  up  the  work ;   and  in  1825,  after 
eight  years  of  splendid  effort,  the  Erie  canal  was  completed, 
-  300  miles  in  length  from  Albany  to  Lake  Erie. 

De  Witt  Clinton  had  been  jeered  as  a  dreamer  of  dreams ; 
and,  in  truth,  the  engineering  difficulties  for  that  day,  and 
the  cost  for  the  State,  meant  more  effort  than  does  the 
Panama  canal  to  the  United  States  to-day.  The  ditch 
was  forty  feet  wide.  It  had  eighty-one  locks,  to  overcome 
a  grade  of  seven  hundred  feet.  Before  the  end,  the  cost  of 
seven  millions  appalled  the  most  enthusiastic  champions 
of  the  scheme ;  but  cost  and  upkeep  were  more  than  met 
from  the  first  by  the  tolls  (half  a  million  dollars  the  first 
year,  and  twice  that  annually  before  1830),  while  the  added 
prosperity  to  the  State  outran  even  Clinton's  hope.  Little 
Buffalo  became  the  main  station  for  the  vast  fur  trade  that 
previously  had  gone  to  Europe  by  way  of  the  St.  And  its 
Lawrence.  Farm  produce  in  the  western  counties  results 
doubled  in  value ;  land  trebled ;  freight  from  New  York  to 
Buffalo  fell  from  $120  to  $20  a  ton,  and  in  a  few  years,  to  $6. 
In  one  year  the  20  vessels  on  Lake  Erie  became  218.  The 
forests  of  the  western  part  of  the  State  were  converted  into 
lumber,  staves,  and  pearl-ash,  and  their  place  was  taken  by 
farms  and  sprawling  villages.  True,  the  lives  of  these  pio 
neers  were  hard  and  narrow,  and  existence  remained  possible 
only  by  Unceasing  struggle,  while  the  fruits  of  their  strenu 
ous  toil  went  in  large  measure  to  enrich  the  East.  New 
York  City,  the  port  for  all  the  Lake  district,  doubled  its 
population  between  1820  and  1830,  taking  Philadelphia's 
place  as  the  leading  American  city  and  securing  more  than 
half  the  total  import  trade  of  the  United  States. 

Pennsylvania  now  found  that  her  recent  expense  for  good 


402  MAKING  THE  THIRD  "WEST" 

roads  by  land  counted  for  little  against  New  York's  water 
communication  with  the  West,  and  in  1826  she  began  her 
own  system  of  canals  from  the  Susquehanna  to  Pittsburg, 
—  with  a  42-mile  portage  over  the  Alleghany  ridge. 

From  the  great  highways,  too,  cheap  but  helpful  "State 
roads"  and  private  turnpikes  began  to  radiate  in  other 
parts  of  the  West.  Ohio  and  Illinois  lacked  stone  for 
road  building,  but  they  invented  a  "plank  road" 
-  long  a  favorite  in  those  States.  The  trees  along 
the  "right  of  way"  furnished  heavy  hewn  planks,  which 
were  laid  side  by  side  on  a  prepared  level  surface  of 
earth. 

The  success  of  the  Erie  and  Pennsylvania  canals  over- 
stimulated  canal  building.  In  particular,  the  new  States 
entered  upon  an  orgy  of  building  far  beyond 
road  build-  their  means.  Between  1825  and  1840  nearly 
e  five  thousand  miles  of  costly  canals  were  con 
structed  in  America,  —  of  which  four  fifths  were 
either  needless  or  were  replaced  soon  by  the  railroad. 

The  rapid  growth  of  the  "New  West"  through  the  period 
1815-1830  had  never  had  a  parallel  in  history.  Between 
Unparalleled  the  admission  of  Ohio  and  that  of  Louisiana  there 
growth  naci  keen  an  interval  of  ten  years  (1802-1812). 
Now  in  six  years  six  States  came  in :  Indiana,  in  1816  ;  Missis 
sippi,  1817  ;  Illinois,  1818  ;  Alabama,  1819  ;  Maine,  1820  ;  and 
Missouri,  1821.  During  the  next  decade  the  Western  States 
grew  at  the  rate  of  from  a  hundred  to  a  hundred  and  fifty  per 
cent,  while  Massachusetts  and  Virginia  remained  almost  sta 
tionary.  Ohio  in  1830  had  a  million  people,  —  more  than 
Massachusetts  and  Connecticut  together.  The  center  of 
population  in  1830  was  125  miles  west  of  Baltimore*  and  the 
Mississippi  valley  contained  more  than  three  and  a  half  mil 
lions  of  our  total  population  of  thirteen  millions,  while  a  mil 
lion  more,  in  the  back  districts  of  the  older  States,  really  be 
longed  to  this  Western  movement.  Since  1800,  the  West 
had  grown  from  a  tenth  to  a  third  of  the  nation.  New  Eng 
land's  total  population  was  only  two  million,  and  she  had 


RAPIDITY  OF  GROWTH,   1815-1830 


403 


gained  only  half  a  million  in  the  last  decade  (even  including 
the  growing  "frontier"  State  of  Maine),  while  the  Missis 
sippi  valley  States  had  gained  a  million  and  a  half.  Indiana 
in  the  decade  from  1810  to  1820  grew  from  24,000  to  147,000  ! 


Throughout  the  period,  Virginia  held  first  place  as  mother 
State  for  the  new  commonwealths  both  north  and  Virginia  still 
south  of  the  Ohio.     Dr.  Turner,  whose  New  West  the  mother 
is  so  often  quoted  in  this  chapter,  has  some  inter-  v 
esting  figures  to  show  the  preponderance  of  Southern  im- 


404  MAKING  THE  THIRD  "WEST" 

migration.  Of  the  Illinois  legislature  in  1833,  he  tells  us, 
58  members  were  from  the  South,  19  from  the  Middle 
States,  and  only  4  from  New  England.  As  late  as  1850, 
two  thirds  the  population  of  Indiana  was  Southern  in  origin. 
Indeed,  the  "Hoosier"  element  was,  originally,  wholly  from 
North  Carolina. 

New  England  was  populating  her  own  frontier  counties 
in  Maine,  and  also,  in  good  measure,  the  western  districts  of 
New  New  York  and  the  Lake  region  of  Ohio.  Her 

England  sons  did  not  begin  to  come  in  large  numbers  into 
immigration  ^he  great  central  valley  until  the  close  of  this 
period.  So  far  as  they  did  come,  they  were  from 
her  western  democratic  farming  communities.  They  kept 
much  of  the  old  Puritan  seriousness  and  moral  earnest 
ness,  mingled  with  a  radicalism  like  that  of  original  Puritans 
of  the  Roger  Williams  type.  They  were  reformers  and 
"  come-outers "  in  religion  and  politics  and  society.  Tem 
perance  movements,  Mormonism,  Abolitionism,  Bible  so 
cieties,  Spiritualism,  Anti-masonry,  schools  and  colleges, 
when  such  things  came  in  the  West,  all  found  their  chief 
support  from  this  element  of  the  population. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

FOREIGN  RELATIONS,    1815-1830 

FROM  Waterloo  to  the  Crimean  War  (1815-1854),  Europe 
had  no  general  war.  This  made  it  easier  for  the  United 
States  to  withdraw  from  European  entanglements  ;  The 
and,  with  one  great  exception  (page  407),  our  Northern 
foreign  questions  were  concerned  mainly  with  un-  boundary 
settled  boundaries.  The  Treaty  of  1783  had  drawn  our 
northern  boundary  from  the  Lake  of  the  Woods  "due 
west"  to  the  Mississippi.  But  Pike's  exploration1  had 
made  clear  that  the  Mississippi  rose  almost  "due  south" 
of  that  lake.  Moreover,  the  line  between  the  Louisiana 
Province  and  the  British  Possessions  had  never  been  de 
termined.  The  Treaty  of  Ghent  referred  the  matter  to  in 
quiry  by  a  mixed  commission;  and  the  "Convention  of 
1818"  between  England  and  the  United  States  fixed  the 
boundary  at  the  49th  parallel  from  the  Lake  of  the  Woods 
to  the  "Stony  Mountains." 

A  still  more  important  "Convention"  the  preceding  year 
(also  provided  for  in  the  Treaty)  had  made  a  vast  gain  for 
humanity.     The  two  nations  agreed  that  neither  „ 
should  keep  armed  vessels  (except  revenue  cutters)   ment "  on 
on  the  Great  Lakes.     This  humane  and  sensible 
arrangement  is  the  nearest  approach  to  disarma 
ment  yet   reached   by   international    agreement.     For   the 
century  since,  in  striking  contrast  to  the  constant  threat 
of   all   European   frontiers   with    their   frowning  fortresses 
crowded    with    hostile-minded    soldiery,    Canada    and    the 

1  In  1805  Jefferson  had,  for  a  second  time,  made  part  of  the  small  army  use 
ful  in  the  interest  of  scientific  exploration :  Lieutenant  Zebulon  Pike,  with  a  small 
company,  traced  the  Mississippi  from  St.  Louis  to  its  source,  and  afterward  ex 
plored  the  headwaters  of  the  Arkansas  and  Red  rivers  (map  after  page  378) . 

405 


406  FOREIGN  RELATIONS,   1815-1830 

United  States  have  smiled  in  constant  friendliness  across 
the  peaceful  waters  that  unite  our  lands. 

Oregon  at  this  time  was  an  indefinite  territory  between 
Spanish  California  and  Russian  Alaska.  No  bounds  had 
claims  to  really  been  drawn  for  any  one  of  these  three 
Oregon  regions.  The  American  basis  for  claiming  Oregon 
has  been  stated  (page  379).  Russia  and  Spain  both  claimed 
it  because  of  their  adjacent  possessions.  More  serious  were 
England's  claims.  Like  all  the  claimants,  England  had 
territory  adjacent  to  this  "no  man's  land"  ;  like  the  United 
States,  she  needed,  through  that  land,  an  opening  on 
the  Pacific  from  her  inland  territory ;  and  she  had  other 
titles  corresponding  closely  to  our  own.  To  leave  out 
of  account  the  ancient  discovery  by  Captain  Cook,  Van 
couver  had  explored  the  coast  in  an  English  vessel  in 
1792,  just  before  Gray  sailed  into  the  mouth  of  the  Colum 
bia.  The  year  following,  Alexander  McKenzie,  in  the 
employ  of  the  Hudson  Bay  Company,  reached  the  region 
overland  from  Canada.  Then  during  the  War  of  1812, 
Hudson  Bay  officers  seized  Astoria,  and  England  now  had 
possession. 

But  in  the  negotiations  with  England  in  1818  John 
Quincy  Adams  (Monroe's  Secretary  of  State)  put  forward 
emphatic  claim  to  the  whole  Oregon  district.  The  "Con 
vention"  postponed  settlement  of  the  question,  leaving  the 
territory  open  for  ten  years  to  occupation  by  both  parties. 
Then,  in  the  Florida  treaty  of  1819-1821,  Adams  secured 
from  Spain  a  waiver  of  any  claim  she  might  have  had  north 
of  the  42d  parallel  (map  facing  page  371).  We  looked  upon 
this  "quitclaim"  from  Spain  as  an  acknowledgment  that 
Oregon  belonged  to  the  United  States. 

Thus  the  matter  rested.  In  1828  the  agreement  with 
England  for  joint  occupation  was  renewed,  subject  to  a  year's 
And  Eastern  notice  by  either  country.  The  debates  in  Con- 
indifference  gress  showed  that  body  rather  indifferent  to  the 
matter.  The  predominant  feeling  was  that  we  could  never 
occupy  so  inaccessible  and  "barren"  a  region,  and  ought 
not  to  if  we  could.  There  were  enthusiastic  Westerners, 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE  407 

however,  whose  robust  faith  foresaw  (with  the  great  Secre 
tary  of  State)  that  in  a  few  years  Oregon  would  be  nearer 
Washington  than  St.  Louis  had  been  a  generation  earlier, 
and  that  it  was  to  make  our  indispensable  gateway  to  the 
Western  ocean  and  the  lands  of  the  Orient,-  "the  long- 
sought  road  to  India."  Said  Senator  Benton  of  Missouri, 
in  an  impassioned  oration,  reproaching  Eastern  indifference, 
"It  is  time  that  Western  men  had  some  share  in  the  des 
tinies  of  this  Republic." 

In  1821-1823  two  foreign  perils  called  forth  from  the 
Administration  the  proclamation  of  the  new  policy,  America 
for  Americans. 

In  1821  the  Tsar  of  Russia  forbade  citizens  of  other  powers 
even  to  approach  within  a  hundred  miles  of   the   Pacific 
coast,  on  the  American  side,  north  of  the  51st  par-  xhe  Russian 
allel.     Russia  had  no  settlements  within  hundreds  peril  in  the 
of  miles  of  that  line  ;  and  this  proclamation  was  ! 
practically  an  attempt  to  reserve  new  American  territory  for 
future  Russian  colonization.     Moreover  it  would  have  turned 
the  Bering  Sea,  with  its  invaluable  fisheries,  into  a  Russian 
lake,  absolutely  closed  to  all  other  peoples.     The  idea  was 
peculiarly   abhorrent,   both    because   of    Russia's  Andthe 
exclusive  commercial  policy  (typified  in  the  proc-  "Holy 


lamation)  ,  and   because   the   Tsar  was  the  head 

e    ,1          i  «TT   i        *ii-  »        1-1  •  m  the  South 

oi   the  despotic      Holy  Alliance,     which  at  just 

this  time  was  planning  to  extend  its  political  system  to 

South  America  and  Mexico. 

That  plan  was  itself  the  second  peril.  In  1821  the  United 
States  recognized  the  independence  of  the  revolted  Spanish 
American  States  and  appointed  diplomatic  agents  to  their 
governments.  But  the  "crowned  conspirators,"  known  as 
the  Holy  Alliance,  having  crushed  an  attempt  at  a  republic 
in  Spain  itself,  now  planned  to  reduce  the  former  American 
colonies  of  Spain  to  their  old  subjection. 

England  stood  forth  in  determined  opposition.  Canning, 
the  English  Secretary  for  Foreign  Affairs,  made  four  sepa 
rate  friendly  suggestions  to  our  minister  in  England  that  the 


408 


FOREIGN  RELATIONS,   1815-1830 


two  English-speaking  powers  join  hands  to  forbid  the  proj 
ect.  President  Monroe  (and  his  unofficial  advisers,  Madi- 
Engiand's  son  and  Jefferson  x)  wished  to  accept  this  offer 
appeals  for  allied  action;  but  John  Quincy  Adams  in 
sisted  strenuously  that  the  United  States  must  "not  come 
in  as  a  cockboat  in  the  wake  of  the  British  man-of-war," 
and  finally  he  carried 
the  Cabinet  and  Presi 
dent  with  him  in  his 
plan  for  independent 
action. 

Canning  acted  first, 
and,  in  his  proud  boast, 
"called  the  New  World 
into  existence,  to  redress 
the  balance  of  the  Old." 
His  firm  statement  that 
England  would  resist  the 
proposed  attack  upon 
the  revolted  American 
States  put  an  abrupt 
close  to  the  idea  of 
European  intervention. 
The  declaration  of  policy 
in  the  United  States 
came  later,  but  it  has 
had  a  greater  perma- 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  in  old  age.  From  the 
portrait  by  Stuart,  now  at  Bowdoin  College. 
From  1809  to  his  death,  Jefferson,  in  retire 
ment  at  Monticello,  remained  a  chief  leader 
of  national  policies,  constantly  consulted  by 


nent  significance.  In 
his  message  to  Congress, 
The  Monroe  December  2, 
Doctrine  jg^  Monroe 

adopted    certain    para 
graphs  on  this  matter,  written  by  Adams.     These  paragraphs 
were  the  first  announcement  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine :  — 


Madison  and  Monroe.  He  died  July  4, 
1826,  the  fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  adoption 
of  his  great  Declaration,  on  the  same  day 
with  his  old  friend  and  rival,  John  Adams, 
with  whom  in  the  closing  years  he  carried  on 
an  interesting  correspondence. 


1  Jefferson  thought  the  matter  "the  most  momentous  since  the  Declaration 
of  Independence."  England's  mighty  weight  —  the  only  real  peril  to  an  independ 
ent  American  system  —  could  now  be  brought  to  the  side  of  freedom ;  and  that 
fact  would  "emancipate  the  continent  at  a  stroke." 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE  409 

[1]  With  special  reference  to  Russia  and  Oregon,--"^ 
American  continents  .  .  .  are  henceforth  not  to  be  considered  as 
subjects  for  future  colonization  by  any  European  powers."  [2] 
With  regard  to  the  proposed  "intervention"  by  the  Holy  Alliance, 
—  "  The  political  system  of  the  allied  powers  is  essentially  different 
from  that  of  America.1  .  .  .  We  owe  it  ...  to  those  amicable 
relations  existing  between  the  United  States  and  those  powers  to 
declare  that  we  should  consider  any  attempt  on  their  part  to  extend 
their  system  to  any  portion  of  this  hemisphere,  as  dangerous  to  our 
peace  and  safety.  .  .  .  With  the  existing  colonies  ...  of  any 
European  power  we  .  .  .  shall  not  interfere.  But  with  the 
Governments  .  .  .  whose  independence  we  have  .  .  .  acknowl 
edged,  we  could  not  view  any  interposition,  for  the  purpose  of 
oppressing  them,  or  controlling  in  any  other  manner  their  destiny, 
by  any  European  power,  in  any  other  light  than  as  a  manifestation 
of  an  unfriendly  disposition  toward  the  United  States." 

In  justification  of  this  position,  the  message  intimated 
also  that  we  intended  not  to  meddle  with  European  affairs. 
We  claimed  primacy  on  this  hemisphere ;  we  would  protect 
our  weaker  neighbors  from  European  intrusion  or  molesta 
tion  ;  but  we  would  leave  the  Old  World  without  interference 
from  us. 

The  thought  of  the  message  was  not  novel.  Part  of  it  is 
found  in  Washington's  utterances,  and  the  best  of  it  had 
been  stated  repeatedly  by  Jefferson.  But  the  practical 
application,  in  1823,  gave  it  a  new  significance.  From  an 
"academic"  question,  it  was  suddenly  lifted  into  a  question 
of  practical  international  politics. 

The  message  was  thoroughly  effective  at  the  moment. 
England   hailed   it   as   making   absolutely   secure   her   own 
policy   of    preventing   European    intervention   in  And  the 
America ;    and  the  Tsar  agreed  to  move  north  250  future 
miles,  and  to   accept  the  line  of  54°  40'  for  the  southern 
boundary  of  Russian  Alaska.     And  the  "Monroe  Doctrine" 
was  not  limited  to  that  period.     It  had  been  announced 
merely  as  an  expression  of  opinion  by  the  President.     No 

1  This  statement  regarding  the  despotic  character  of  the  powers  united  in  the 
Holy  Alliance  has,  of  course,  little  logical  bearing  upon  intervention  in  America 
to-day  by  any  European  country. 


410  FOREIGN  RELATIONS,   1815-1830 

other  branch  of  the  government  was  asked  even  to  express 
approval.  But  the  cordial  response  of  the  nation,  on  this 
and  all  subsequent  occasions,  has  made  the  Monroe  Doctrine, 
in  truth,  the  American  Doctrine.  The  only  real  danger  to  its 
permanence  is  that  we  so  act  as  to  inspire  our  weaker  Ameri 
can  brethren  with  fear  that  we  mean  to  use  its  high  morality 
as  a  shield  under  cover  of  which  we  may  ourselves  plunder 
them  at  will.  If  it  ever  becomes  probable  that  the  sheep 
dog  wards  off  the  wolves  that  he  himself  may  have  a  fuller 
meal,  his  function  will  not  long  endure. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

NATIONALISM    AND    REACTION 

FROM  1807  to  1815  the  embargo  and  the  war  shut  out 
European  goods.     This  afforded  an  artificial  "pro-  The  warand 
tection"  for  home  manufactures.     We  had  to  use  newmanu- 
up  our  own  raw  cotton,  wool,  and  iron,  or  let  them 
go  unused  ;  and  we  had  to  supply  our  own  clothing,  fabrics, 
tools,  and  machinery,  or  do  without. 

This  new  demand  for  building  up  home  manufactures  was 
met  mainly  in  New  England,  where  much  capital  and  labor, 
formerly  engaged  in  shipping,  was  temporarily  unemployed. 
In  1807  New  England  cotton  mills  had  only  8000  spindles 
in  use  (page  345) ;  in  1809  the  number  was  80,000 ;  and,  by 
the  close  of  the  war,  500,000,  employing  100,000  workers. 
Woolen  and  iron  manufactures  had  not  grown  quite  so 
rapidly ;  but  they  also  were  well  under  way.  The  total 
capital  invested  had  risen  to  about  a  hundred  million  dollars. 
Two  fifths  of  this  was  in  the  cotton  industry. 

When  peace  returned,  it  was  plain  that  this  manufac 
turing  industry,  developed  by  unnatural  conditions,  could 
not  sustain  itself  against  restored  competition.  We  could 
let  it  die,  and  permit  the  capital  and  labor  to  find  their  way 
back  into  other  industries;  or  we  could  now  "protect"  it 
from  foreign  competition  by  law.  To  do  this,  we  would 
place  high  tariffs  on  foreign  goods  like  those  we  manu 
factured. 

If  we  adopted  this  policy  of  "protection,"  we  should  pay 
more  for  the  articles  than  if  we  let  them  come  in,  untaxed, 
from  the  Old  World,  where  their  cost  was  lower.  But,  it 
was  urged,  we  should  have  more  diversified  industries, 
larger  city  populations,  and  so  more  of  a  home  market  for 
our  raw  materials  and  for  foodstuffs,  —  and,  after  a  time, 

411 


412  NATIONALISM  AND  REACTION,  1815-1830 

when  we  should  come  to  do  the  work  efficiently,  even 
cheaper  manufactures,  because  of  the  absence  of  ocean 
freights. 

The  question  of  "  protection  "  was  not  new.  Earlier  tariffs 
had  been  framed  to  carry  "  incidental  protection  "  (page  308) ; 
and  in  a  famous  Report  on  Manufactures  Hamilton  had 
argued  for  a  protective  tariff.  But  all  such  plans  had 
been  for  taxation  in  order  to  create  manufactures.  It  was 
more  effective  to  call  upon  Congress  to  preserve  industries 
into  which  a  national  war  had  driven  our  citizens, 
for "  eco-  Moreover,  Galhoun  and  Clay  urged  that  America 
nomkinde-  must  make  itself  independent,  economically,  of 

pendence         .„  o       i  •     i  i  ,1 

Europe,  bucn  economic  independence,  they  ar 
gued  eloquently,  was  essential  to  real  political  independence. 
They  took  ground  for  America  like  that  which  led  English 
statesmen  in  1660  to  favor  the  old  Navigation  Acts  for  the 
British  Empire.  The  war  had  just  given  point  to  the  plea. 
For  the  first  time,  too,  the  farmer  began  to  call  for  protection. 
He  had  been  raising  flax  and  hemp,  and  had  imported  costly 
Merinoes  to  supply  the  woolen  mills.  Now  that  the  textile 
mills  had  shut  down,  he  had  no  market  nearer  than  England. 
John  Randolph  raised  his  voice  in  almost  solitary  protest 
in  Congress,  in  behalf  of  the  "consumer."  With  keen  in 
sight,  he  warned  the  agricultural  masses  that  they  were  to 
pay  the  bills,  and  that,  in  the  discussion  of  future  rates, 
they  would  never  be  able  to  make  their  needs  and  opinions 
felt  in  Congress  as  could  the  small  body  of  interested  and 
influential  capitalists :  - 

"Alert,  vigilant,  enterprising,  active,  the  manufacturing  interests 
are  collected  .  .  .  ready  to  associate  at  a  moment's  notice  for 
any  purpose  of  general  interest  to  their  body.  .  .  .  Nay,  they  are 
always  assembled.  They  are  always  on  the  Rialto ;  and  Shy  lock 
and  Antonio  meet  every  day,  as  friends,  and  compare  notes. 
And  they  possess,  in  trick  and  intelligence,  what,  in  the  good 
ness  of  God  to  them,  the  others  can  never  have." 

The  Tariff  of  1816  was  enacted  by  a  two^thirds  vote  as  an 
avowed  protective  measure.  Revenue  had  become  the  inci- 


PROTECTIVE  TARIFFS  413 

dent.     Imported  cottons  and  woolens  were  taxed  25  per  cent ; 
and  manufactured  iron,  slightly  more.     On  cheap  grades  of 
cloth  the  rate  was  really  much  higher  than  25  per  Tariff 
cent,  —  disguised  by  a  "minimum-price"  clause.  ofl816 
That  is,  the  bill  provided  that,  for  purposes  of  taxation,  no 
cotton  cloth  should  be  valued  at  less  than  25  cents  a  yard. 
If  the  cloth  was  really  worth  only  13  cents,  the  tariff  was  still 
6i  cents,  or,  in  reality,  fifty  per  cent.     This  effective  device 
for  placing  the  chief  tariff  burden  upon  the  poorest  classes 
was  much  practiced  in  later  tariffs. 

These  rates  proved  too  low  for  their  purpose.  English 
warehouses  were  heavily  overstocked  with  the  accumula 
tions  of  the  years  of  European  wars,  during  which  the 
markets  of  the  world  had  been  closed  to  them ;  and  now 
these  goods  were  dumped  upon  America  at  sacrifice  prices. 

Moreover,  in  1819,   came  the  first  world-wide  industrial 
depression.     Senator  Thomas  H.  Benton  describes  The 
the  years  1819-1820  as  "a  period  of  gloom  and  "panic" 
agony.     No  money  ...  no  price  for  property  or  of  1819 
produce.     No  sales  but  those  of  the  sheriff.     No  purchaser 
but  the  creditor  or  some  hoarder  of  money.     No  employ 
ment  for  industry."     Niles'  Register,  a  paper  representing  the 
interests  of  capital,  confessed  in  August,  1819,  that  20,000 
men  were  daily  hunting  work  on  the  streets  of  Philadelphia, 
-  more  than  half  the  adult  male  population  of  that  day  ! 

The  American  causes  for  this  depression  of  1819  resembled 
those  of  later  "crises."  The  promise  of  the  tariff  itself  had 
caused  overinvestment  in  factories  in  the  East;  and  in 
the  West  there  had  been  reckless  overinvestment  in  public 
lands  by  thousands  of  poor  immigrants  who  were  unduly 
allured  by  the  "credit  system"  of  purchase.  A  third  cause, 
which  intensified  the  evil,  was  the  recent  multiplication  of 
"wild-cat"  State  banks  (after  the  expiration  of  the  first 
National  Bank  in  1811),  which  had  loaned  money  in  extrav 
agant  amounts,  and  so  had  encouraged  all  sorts  of  specu 
lation.  When  at  length  these  banks  found  themselves 
forced  to  call  in,  their  loans,  or  to  close  their  doors,  they 
spread  panic  and  confusion  throughout  society. 


414        NATIONALISM  AND  ITS  REACTION,   1815-1830 

The  manufacturing  interests,  however,  ascribed  all  the 
depression  to  insufficient  "protection,"  and  the  Tariff  of  18*21+ 
Tariff  of  found  its  leading  champion  in  Clay,  who  now  glori- 
1824  fieci  the  protective  policy  with  the  name,  the  Ameri 

can  System.  The  chief  opposition  in  debate  came  from  Web 
ster,  who  represented  a  commercial  district  in  Massachusetts, 
and  who  took.his  stand  upon  absolute  free-trade  policy.1  In 
general,  New  England  was  divided,  wavering  between  manu 
factures  and  a  return  to  its  old  shipping  interests.  The  South 
had  been  almost  solid  for  protection  in  1816,  but  now  it  was 
solid  in  opposition,  and  it  loudly  denied  the  constitutionality 
of  such  laws.  Slavery,  it  found,  shut  it  out  from  the  manu 
facturing  industry,  and  its  agricultural  exports  could  not  be 
sold  to  advantage  unless  the  United  States  enjoyed  a  large 
and  free  commerce  with  other  nations.  The  tariff  threat 
ened  to  shut  off  such  trade,  besides  increasing  the  cost  of 
manufactured  articles. 

The  bill  passed  by  bare  majorities,  through  the  union  of 
the  manufacturing  Middle  States  and  the  agricultural 
West,  which  hoped  to  see  a  home  market  for  its  wool  and 
hemp,  —  and  which  believed  in  "loose  construction"  be 
cause  it  wanted  government  aid  for  internal  improvements. 
Tariff  rates,  on  an  average,  rose  to  about  33  per  cent ;  and, 
under  this  stimulus,  the  capital  invested  in  manufactures 
trebled  in  three  years. 

Clamor  continued,  however,  for  still  higher  protection ; 
and,  four  years  later,  Congress  enacted  the  third  great  tariff 
Tariff  of  of  this  period,  —  the  "Tariff  of  Abominations." 
1828  This  Tariff  of  1828  was  engineered  largely  by  men 

who  planned  to  make  Jackson  President.  None  of  the  other 
political  leaders  dared  oppose  it  on  the  eve  of  a  presidential 
campaign,  but  they  did  make  it  an  atrocious  hotch-potch  by 
amendments,  —  in  the  vain  hope  that  its  authors  them 
selves  would  refuse  to  swallow  it.  Said  John  Randolph, 
"This  bill  encourages  manufactures  of  no  sort  but  the  manu- 

1  Webster  followed  the  teachings  of  all  "the  Fathers,"  except  Hamilton.  The 
Revolution,  in  no  small  degree,  was  fought  for  the  right  to  trade  at  will  with  the 
world.  For  a  generation  afterward,  this  fact  gave  a  free-trade  bias  to  our  thought. 


A  NEW  SECTIONALISM  415 

facture  of  a  President."  Webster  now  changed  sides,  frankly 
assigning  as  his  reason  that  Massachusetts  had  accepted 
protection  as  a  settled  national  policy  and  had  invested  her 
capital  in  manufactures.  New  England  and  the  South  had 
exchanged  positions  on  the  tariff  since  1816.  The  law  raised 
the  average  of  duties  on  taxed  articles  to  49  per  cent,  —  far 
the  highest  point  touched  until  the  "war-tariffs"  of  the 
sixties,  —  and  gave  rise  to  a  new  nullification  movement. 

The  feeling  for  nationality  upheld  the  Supreme  Court  in  a 
remarkable  series  of  decisions  during  this  period.  Perhaps 
the  most  famous  case  was  that  of  McCulloch  v. 
Maryland  in  1819.  Maryland  had  imposed  a  ruin- 
ous  tax  on  the  Baltimore  branch  of  the  National  extends 
Bank,  to  drive  it  from  the  State,  and  had  brought 
suit  in  her  own  courts  against  McCulloch,  an 
officer  of  the  Bank,  to  collect  the  money.  The  Mary 
land  court  upheld  the  tax  and  denied  the  constitution 
ality  of  the  Bank  —  since  the  power  to  charter  a  bank 
was  not  among  the  "enumerated  powers."  McCulloch 
applied  to  the  Federal  Supreme  Court  for  a  "writ  of 
error."  That  court  took  jurisdiction  and  reversed  the 
State  court.  The  decision  was  written  by  John  Marshall. 
Three  points  call  for  notice  :  - 

1.  The  title  of  the  case  would  seem  to  imply  a  suit  by  an 
individual  against  a  State  —  such  as  is  forbidden  to  Federal 
Courts  by  the  Eleventh  amendment.     But  the  State  had 
begun  the  suit  originally;    and  the  Court  held  that  in  such 
a  case  an  appeal  by  the  individual  was  not  forbidden  by  the 
amendment.     This  was  the  express  point  decided  by  Mar 
shall  in  another  great  case,  Cohens  v.  Virginia,  in  1821.   It  re 
stored  to  the  Federal  judiciary  a  large  part  of  the  power  that 
the  Eleventh  amendment  had  been  designed  to  take  away. 

2.  Following  the  argument  of  Hamilton  in  1791,  Marshall 
affirmed  that  Congress  had  power  to  charter  a  bank  under 
the   "necessary   and   proper"   clause   of   the   Constitution. 
Those  words,  he  said,  meant  merely  "appropriate." 


416       NATIONALISM  AND  SECTIONALISM,   1815-1830 

3.  The  State  tax  law  was  declared  void  because  in  con 
flict  with  this  Federal  law.  Before  this,  State  laws  had 
been  declared  unconstitutional  only  when  in  conflict  with 
the  Federal  Constitution  itself. 

Between  1819  and  1828,  eleven  of  the  twenty-four  States 
had  one  or  more  laws  declared  void  by  the  Federal  courts. 
Opposition  These  decisions,  however,  did  not  go  without 
by  the  vehement  opposition.  Political  writers  piled  up 

pamphlets  of  scathing  denunciation  against  them  ; 
and  half  the  States  protested  or  actually  resisted  some 
decree.  Virginia  sought  strenuously  to  have  Congress  re 
peal  the  clause  of  the  Judiciary  Act  that  gave  the  Supreme 
Court  its  appellate  power  (page  306) .  Ohio,  by  force,  took 
from  a  branch  of  the  National  Bank  a  State  tax,  despite 
the  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court,  and  held  it  for  six  years. 
Georgia  nullified  a  treaty  made  by  the  Federal  govern 
ment  with  the  Southern  Indians  within  her  borders ;  the 
Supreme  Court  upheld  the  treaty ;  but  Georgia  threatened 
war  if  the  government  should  try  to  enforce  its  rights,  and 
carried  her  point  (pages  468-469) . 

The  opposition  to  the  Federal  judiciary  came  from  the 
South  and  West,  and  was  merely  one  indication  of  a  new 
Summary:     sectionalism. 
Nationalism       prom  1800  to  1815    every  suggestion  of  inter- 

andsec-  „  .  ^         &^       ,        ,, 

tionaiism,  terence  with  commerce  (New  .England  s  mam 
isoo-1860  economic  interest)  had  called  out  threats  of  nul 
lification  or  secession  from  that  section.  The  pocketbook 
was  stronger  than  New  England's  loyalty. 

The  war  created  a  new  Nationalism.  From  1815  to  1820, 
this  force  seemed  wholly  triumphant.  It  expressed  itself 
(1)  in  demands  for  internal  improvements,  to  bind  the  parts 
of  the  Union  together  more  closely  ;  (2)  in  protective  tariffs, 
to  make  the  country  independent  of  Europe  economically ; 
(3)  in  a  new  National  Bank,  to  finance  the  government ; 
and  (4)  in  the  victory  of  ''Broad  Construction"  along  vari 
ous  other  lines,  —  especially  in  a  wider  Federal  control  over 
internal  commerce,  of  which  space  permits  no  discussion. 


THE  MISSOURI  COMPROMISE  OF  1820  417 

But  by  1820  this  Nationalism  had  to  contend  with  a 
reaction  toward  State  sovereignty  and  sectionalism.  From 
that  time  to  the  Civil  War,  political  history  is  a  struggle  be 
tween  the  forces  of  Union  and  Disunion.  This  time  it  was 
the  South  that  felt  her  pocketbook  in  danger.  She  threat 
ened  to  nullify  protective  tariffs  because  she  thought  they 
hindered  her  agricultural  prosperity,  and  every  suggestion 
of  Federal  interference  with  slavery  impelled  her  into  dis 
union  movements,  because  her  leading  industry  rested  on 
slave  labor. 

One  of  the  first  manifestations  of  this  new  sectionalism 
was  the  struggle  that  resulted  in  the  Missouri  Compromise  of 
1820.     Until    that   time  a    careful    balance    had  The 
been  maintained  between  slave  and  free  States  in  Missouri 
admitting  new  commonwealths.     Vermont  offset  Compromise 
Kentucky ;     Ohio,  Tennessee.     Louisiana   (1812) 
made  the  number  of  free  and  slave  States  just  equal.     But 
the  free  States  grew  much  faster  in  population,  and  by  1820 
(even  under  the  three-fifths  rule)  they  had  the  larger  number 
of  Representatives  in  the  lower  House  of  Congress  by  a 
fourth. 

Missouri  had  been  settled  mainly  through  Kentucky, 
with  many  slaveholders  among  its  people.  In  1819  a  bill 
for  its  admission  to  the  Union  came  before  Congress.  The 
proposed  State  lay  north  of  the  line  of  the  Ohio,  which,  with 
Mason  and  Dixon's  line,  divided  free  and  slave  territory 
east  of  the  Mississippi.  The  North  roused  itself  to  insist 
on  maintaining  that  same  line  west  of  the  river ;  and  mass 
meetings  and  legislative  resolutions  protested  against  ad 
mission  with  slavery.  The  South  protested  quite  as  vehe 
mently  against  any  restriction  upon  the  wishes  and  rights 
of  the  Missouri  people.  The  House  of  Representatives,  by 
a  majority  of  one  vote,  added  an  amendment  to  the  bill, 
prohibiting  slavery  in  the  proposed  State.  The  Senate 
struck  out  this  "Tallmadge  amendment,"  *•  and  the  bill 
failed  for  that  session.  No  one  yet  denied  the  constitutional 

1  Introduced  by  James  Tallmadge  of  New  York. 


418       NATIONALISM  AND  SECTIONALISM,   1815-1830 

power  of  Congress  to  forbid  or  regulate  slavery  in  the  Terri 
tories,  but  many  Northerners,  even,  denied  the  right  of 
Congress  to  impose  restrictions  upon  a  new  State  — -  so  as  to 
make  it  less  "sovereign"  than  older  States. 

At  the  next  session  of  Congress  (1820),  the  Maine  district 
of  Massachusetts  was  also  an  applicant  for  admission  as  a 
new  State.  The  House  passed  both  bills,  restoring  the  Tall- 
madge  amendment  for  Missouri.  The  Senate  put  the  two 
bills  into  one,  and  substituted  for  the  Tallmadge  pro 
hibition  of  slavery  the  Missouri  Compromise.  Missouri 
was  to  be  admitted,  with  permission  to  establish  slavery, 
but  no  other  slave  State  should  be  formed  out  of  existing 
national  domain  north  of  the  southern  boundary  of  Missouri 
(36°  30').  The  policy  of  the  Northwest  Ordinance  was 
applied  to  the  greater  part  of  the  Louisiana  Purchase. 

For  the  whole  period  1816-1829,  true  political  parties 
were  lacking.  The  old  Federalists  had  been  galvanized  into 
iThe  "  era  activity  in  New  England  by  the  Embargo  and 
jof  good  the  war ;  but  in  1816  they  cast  only  35  elec 
toral  votes,  and  in  1820  none.  The  old  party 
lines  were  wholly  gone.  Accordingly,  the  period  has  some 
times  been  miscalled  "the  era  of  good  feeling."  In 
fact,  it  was  an  era  of  exceeding  bad  feeling.  The  place 
of  parties,  with  real  principles,  was  taken  by  factions,  moved 
only  by  personal  or  sectional  ambitions. 

This  became  plain  in  the  campaign  of  1824.  Crawford  of 
Georgia  was  nominated  for  the  presidency  by  a  Congres- 
The  election  sional  caucus  which,  however,  was  attended  by 
of  1824  jess  than  a  third  of  the  members.  Legislatures  in 
the  New  England  States  nominated  John  Quincy  Adams ; 
and  in  like  fashion,  Clay  was  nominated  by  Kentucky  and 
Missouri,  and  Andrew  Jackson  by  Tennessee  and  Pennsyl 
vania.  Jackson's  candidacy  was  a  surprise  and  an  offense  to 
the  other  statesmen  of  the  period.  He  was  a  "  military  hero," 
and,  to  their  eyes  at  that  time,  nothing  more.  Never  before 
had  a  man  been  a  candidate  for  that  office  without  long  and 
distinguished  political  service  behind  him.  The  campaign 


NEW  PARTIES  AFTER  1824  419 

was  marked  by  bitter  personalities.  Adams,  whose  forbid 
ding  manners  kept  him  aloof  from  the  multitude,  was  de 
rided  as  an  aristocrat,  while  Jackson  was  applauded  as  a 
"man  of  the  people."  Jackson  had  99  votes;  Adams,  84; 
Crawford,  41 ;  Clay,  37.  According  to  the  Twelfth  amend 
ment,  the  House  of  Representatives  chose  between  the 
three  highest ;  and  Adams  became  President,  through  votes 
thrown  to  him  by  Clay.  Adams  afterward  appointed  Clay 
his  Secretary  of  State ;  and  friends  of  Jackson  complained 
bitterly  that  the  "will  of  the  people"  had  been  thwarted  by 
what  John  Randolph  called  a  "corrupt  coalition  between 
Puritan  and  blackleg."  (Clay  challenged  Randolph,  and  a 
duel  was  fought  without  injury  to  any  one.  Honor  thus 
appeased,  pleasant  social  relations  were  restored  between 
the  two.) 

The  charge  of  a  bargain  was  bitterly  unjust;    but  the 
Jackson  men  at  once  began  the  campaign  for  the  next  elec 
tion   with   Jackson's    slogan-    "Let    the    people  john 
rule."  Adams  was  thwarted  at  every  turn  through-   Quincy 
out  his  four  years.     In  1807  Adams  had  moved  Ada 
the  resolution  in  Congress  that  called  out  Gallatin's  Report 
(page  366),  and  now,  as  President,  his  inaugural  announced 
internal  improvements  as  a  leading  policy,  in  opposition  to 
the  vetoes    of  Madison  and  Monroe.     His    first    Message 
urged  Congress  further  to  multiply  roads,  found  a  National 
University,    and    build    an  astronomical  observatory—    "a 
lighthouse  of  the  skies."     But  by  this  time  many  States  had 
begun  roads  and  canals  of  their  own,  and  had  no  wish  to 
help  pay  for  competing  lines  elsewhere;    so  Congress  had 
become  lukewarm   even  on  this  matter.     The  President's 
position,  however,  helped  on  the  formation  of  new  political 
parties.     Supporters  of  Adams  and  Clay,  standing  for  in 
ternal  improvements    and    protection,   took  the    name    of 
National  Republicans,  to  indicate  their  belief  in  a 
strong  Central  government.     To  the  Jackson  men 
the  campaign  of  1828  was  a  protest  against  the  undemocratic 
"usurpation"   of   1824.     Accordingly  they  took  the  name 
Democratic  Republicans  (to  indicate  their  claim  also  to  be 


420       NATIONALISM  AND  SECTIONALISM,  1815-1830 

the  true  successors  of  Jefferson's  "  Republican  party  ")  or, 
a  little  later,  merely  Democrats.  In  opposition  to  the 
Broad  Construction  platform  of  their  opponents,  they  soon 
became  a  "Strict  Construction"  party;  but  they  won  the 
election  of  1828  before  this  question  came  to  the  front. 


PAET  VIII— A  NEW  DEMOOKACY,   1830-1850 
CHAPTER  XXV 

THE  AMERICA  OF   1830-1850 
I.   THE   THREE   SECTIONS 

IN  1830  the  Union  had  three  great  sections,  —  North, 
South,  and  West.  But  the  Mississippi  of  that  day  was 
not  "Southern,"  nor  was  Illinois  "Northern."  Both  be 
longed  to  the  West,  while  "North"  and  "South"  applied 
only  to  the  divisions  of  the  Atlantic  States. 

The  North  Atlantic  section  was  turning  to  manufacturing. 
New  England  used  the  water  power  of  her  rivers  for  cotton, 
woolen,  and  paper  mills,  building  up  a  new  line  The  North 
of    towns    (the    Fall    line)    as    at  Lowell,    Man-  Atlantic 
chester,    Lawrence,    Holyoke,    and    Fall    River.  £ 
Pennsylvania,  New  Jersey,  and  New  York  got  like  results 
by  using  "stone  coal"  from  the  Pennsylvania  mines,  which 
were    now  accessible    cheaply  by  the    Pennsylvania  canal 
system.     In  1830  America  still  had  only  32  cities  with  more 
than  8000  people ;    but  all  but  four  of  these  were  in  this 
manufacturing  region.     The  population  of  the  new  factory 
towns  came  at  first  from  the  old  farming  class,  drawn  in 
from  the  country  by  the  lure  of  companionship   and  cash 
wages.     But  in  the  thirties  these  workers  began  to  be  re 
placed  by  immigrants  fresh  from  the  Old  World. 

The  South  had  become  stationary  in  industry.     Slave  labor 
was  unfit  for  manufactures  ;  so  the  water  power  and  mineral 
resources  of  that  district  went  unused  for  forty  The  ^^ 
years  more.     The  leading  industry  remained  to 
bacco  and  cotton  raising.     Southern  society,  too,  remained 
stratified   along   the   old  lines.     (1)  At  the  top  were  some 

421 


422  THE  AMERICA  OF  1830 

0000  families  (25,000  or  30,000  people)  of  large  planters, 
with  numerous  slaves,  —  sometimes  a  thousand  to  one  owner. 
This  aristocracy  furnished  the  South's  representation  in  the 
National  government  and  almost  all  the  higher  State  officials. 
(2)  A  hundred  and  thirty  thousand  families  (650,000  people) 
owned  perhaps  from  one  to  four  slaves  each.  These  small 
slaveholders,  with  about  as  many  more  non-slaveholding 
but  well-to-do  farmers,  made  up  the  yeomanry  of  the 
South,  from  whom  were  to  come  her  famous  soldiery.  This 
class  often  differed  from  the  aristocracy  in  political  motives 
and  aims ;  but  it  lacked  leaders,  and  it  had  no  organization 
from  State  to  State.  (3)  The  "poor  Whites,"  without 
other  property  than  a  miserable  cabin  and  a  rough  clearing, 
outnumbered  the  yeomanry  two  to  one.  This  class  made 
the  political  following  of  the  rich  planters.  (4)  The  180,000 
free  Negroes  were  hedged  in  by  many  vexing  laws,  and  had, 
of  course,  no  political  rights.  They  could  not  serve  on 
juries ;  nor  were  they  allowed  to  move  from  place  to  place 
at  will,  or  to  receive  any  education.1  (5)  The  2,000,000 
slaves  made  about  half  the  whole  population. 

The  Mississippi  valley  gave  two  more  States  to  the 
Union  in  the  decade  after  1830  :  Arkansas  in  1836,  and 
Michigan  in  1837.  The  West  continued  to  grow 
more  than  twice  as  fast  as  the  rest  of  the  country. 
Between  1830  and  1840,  Ohio  increased  70  per  cent ;  Indiana 
and  Alabama,  100  per  cent ;  Illinois  and  Mississippi  trebled 
their  numbers ;  Michigan  multiplied  her  32,000  by  seven. 
In  1835  a  line  of  steamboats  began  to  ply  regularly  between 
Buffalo,  at  the  end  of  the  Erie  Canal,  and  Chicago.  Now 
for  the  first  time,  New  England  had  a  fit  road  to  the  West. 
Her  sons  quickly  colonized  southern  Michigan  and  northern 
Indiana  and  Illinois,  and  a  little  later  they  made  the  lead 
ing  element  in  Wisconsin,  Iowa,  and  Minnesota.  In  1830 
Chicago  and  Milwaukee  were  still  mere  fur-trading  stations. 
Pittsburg,  with  its  12,000  people,  was  growing  dingy  with 
coal  smoke  from  its  iron  mills.  Cincinnati  ("Porkopolis"), 

1  There  were  nearly  as  many  more  free  Negroes  in  the  "Negro  quarters"  of 
Northern  cities. 


OPTIMISTIC  DEMOCRACY 


423 


in  the  center  of  a  rich  farming  country,  had  25,000  people 
and  took  to  itself  the  name  "Queen  City  of  the  West"; 
but  it  was  the  only  place  in  the  oldest  Northwestern  State 
with  more  than  3000  people.  St.  Louis,  the  point  of  ex 
change  between  the  fur  trade  of  the  upper  Mississippi  and 
Missouri,  on  the  north,  and  the  steamboat  trade  from  New 
Orleans,  boasted  6000.  New  Orleans  remained  without 
much  change.  The  rest  of  the  people  dwelt  in  villages  or 
on  farms.  Outside  the  aristocratic  black  belt,  most  of  them 
lived  in  log  cabins  with  homemade  tables  and  beds  and 
with  rough  benches  or  blocks  of  wood  for  chairs. 


CHICAGO  ("FORT  DEARBORN")  IN  1831.     From  a  lithograph  of  the  Chicago  His 
torical  Society,  based  on  a  contemporary  drawing. 

The  Westerners  of  1830  had  developed  a  new  American 
type — to  remain  the  dominant  one  for  two  generations  :  tall, 
gaunt  men,  adventurous  and  resolute,  of  master-  A  new 
f ul  temper,  daunted  by  no  emergency,  impatient  of  American 
authority,  but  with  a  leaven  of  high  idealism.    The 
West  believed  in  the  worth  of  the  common  man.     Already  it 
had  become  "the  most  American  part  of  America."     Here 
the  new  nation  showed  best  its  raw  youth,  unpolished,  but 
sound    at    heart ;    crude,  ungainly,    lacking  the  poise  and 
repose  and  dignity  of  older  societies;    but  buoyantly  self- 


424  THE  AMERICA  OF  1830 

confident,  throbbing  with  rude  vigor,  grappling  uncon 
cernedly  with  impossible  tasks,  getting  them  done  somehow, 
and  dreaming  overnight  of  vaster  ones  for  the  morrow. 
Some  small  embarrassment  it  felt  for  its  temporary  igno 
rance  of  books  and  art ;  but  it  exulted  boastfully  in  its 
mastery  of  nature  and  its  daring  social  experiments,  and 
it  appealed,  with  sure  faith,  to  the  future  to  add  the  re 
finements  and  graces  of  life. 

This  "American  propensity  to  look  forward  to  the  future" 
for  whatever  it  lacked  in  the  present  particularly  amused  the 
Foreign  many  supercilious  and  superficial  English  travelers 
critics  Of  the  day.  These  prejudice-blinded  gentlemen 

delighted  in  portraying,  with  microscopic  detail,  skin-deep 
blemishes  of  American  society.  Even  Charles  Dickens,  whom 
America  loved,  saw  little  but  the  spittoons  and  the  hurry  at 
the  lunch  counters.  No  one  of  these  critics  saw  at  all  the 
most  amazing  spectacle  of  all  history  spread  before  their  eyes : 
a  nation  in  the  making,  occupying  and  subduing  a  rebellious 
continent ;  felling  forests,  plowing  prairies,  clearing  the 
rivers,  hewing  out  roads ;  founding  farms  and  towns  and 
commonwealths  ;  solving  offhand  grave  economic  problems; 
wastefully  sometimes,  but  effectively ;  and  inventing  and 
working  out,  on  a  gigantic  scale,  new,  progressive  principles 
of  society  and  government.  "You  can't  write  books," 
carped  the  visitor.  "We're  busy  just  now,"  shouted  the 
West  carelessly  over  its  shoulder,  "but  just  wait  till  we  get 
this  bridge  built,  these  prairies  farmed,  that  new  constitution 
framed." 

In  1820  Sydney  Smith  closed  his  tirade  in  the  Edinburgh 
Review  with  the*  famous  passage:  "Who,  in  the  four 
quarters  of  the  globe,  reads  an  American  book?  or  goes  to 
an  American  play?  or  looks  at  an  American  painting  or 
statue?  .  .  .  Who  drinks  out  of  American  glasses?  .  .  . 
or  sleeps  in  American  blankets  ?  "  To  this  charge  (which  the 
next  twenty  years  were  to  make  stupendously  ridiculous) 
the  North  American  Review  replied  with  the  customary 
defense,  —  the  appeal  to  the  future.  This  resulted  in  more 
ridicule  from  the  English  Review :  — 


THE  AWAKENING  OF  LABOR  425 

"Others  claim  honor  because  of  things  done  by  a  long  line  of 
ancestors :  an  American  glories  in  the  achievements  of  a  distant 
posterity.  .  .  .  Others  appeal  to  history  :  an  American  appeals 
to  prophecy.  ...  If  a  traveller  complains  of  the  inns,  and  hints 
a  dislike  for  sleeping  four  in  a  bed,  he  ...  is  told  to  wait  a  hun 
dred  years  and  see  the  superiority  of  American  inns  over  British. 
If  Shakspere,  Milton,  Newton,  are  mentioned,  he  is  told  again, 
'  Wait  till  we  have  cleared  our  land,  till  we  have  idle  time,  wait 
till  1900,  and  then  see  how  much  nobler  our  poets  and  profounder 
our  philosophers  and  longer  our  telescopes,  than  any  your  decrepit 
old  hemisphere  will  produce.'" 

That  the  retort  might  not  seem  so  amusing  "in  1900" 
never  occurred  to  the  English  humorist,  —  or  that  there 
was  quite  as  much  sense  in  taking  pride  in  descendants, 
whom  we  will  have  some  share  in  fashioning,  as  in  ancestors, 
who  have  only  fashioned  us.  Englishmen  paid  dearly  for 
this  flippant  blindness  by  the  rancor  stirred  in  American 
hearts,  —  which  unhappily  persisted  long  after  England  had 
frankly  confessed  her  error. 

H.   THE  AWAKENING  OF  LABOR,   1825-1837 

Laborin'  man  an1  laborin'  woman 

Hev  one  glory  an'  one  shame  : 
Ev'y  thin  thet's  done  inhuman 

Injers  all  on  'em   the  same. 

—  LOWELL,  in  the  Biglow  Papers. 

The  democratic  upheaval  of  the  thirties,  revealed  first    ]/ 
in  the  election  of  Jackson,  was  due,  first  of  all,  to  the  growth 
of  the  West.     Next  to  that,  it  was  due  to  the  awakening 
of  the  labor  class  in  Eastern  cities. 

In  large  degree,  this  labor  class  was  a  new  class,  due  to  the 
recent  introduction  of  new  machinery,  and  new  methods  of 
manufacturing,  from  England.     In  the  last  quarter  The  In_ 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  while  America  was  wag-  dustnai 
ing  her  War  of  Independence,  and  while  France  was  Revolutlon 
giving  the  world  her  great  social  revolution,  obscure  crafts 
men   in   England  —  busied    in    homely    toil,   puzzling   day 
after    day    over  wheels  and  belts  and  levers,  and  seeking 


426  THE  AMERICA  OF  1830 

some  way  to  save  time  —  had  been  working  out  the  In 
dustrial  Revolution  which  was  to  change  the  daily  life  of  the 
masses  of  men  and  women  and  children  over  all  the  world. 

In  colonial  times,  each  housewife  spent  all  spare  moments 
at  the  spinning  wheel,  drawing  out  the  fiber  of  flax  or  wool 
into  thread  or  yarn,  one  thread  at  a  time.  This  thread 
was  woven  into  cloth  on  the  primitive  hand  loom,  older 
than  history.  In  America  this  weaving  also  was  usually 
done  in  each  farm  home.  In  England  it  was  done  commonly 
by  a  distinct  class  of  skilled  weavers. 

The  spinning  was  the  slower  work.  One  weaver  could 
use  all  the  thread  that  eight  spinning  wheels  could  supply. 
En  lish  ^e  weavers  could  not  get  thread  fast  enough ; 
inventions  and  in  1761  prizes  began  to  be  offered  for  inven- 
for  textile  tions  for  swifter  spinning.  Three  years  later 

industries  .  ,  .  . J       . 

—  just  when  parliament  was  blundering  into  the 
Stamp  Act  —  James  Hargreaves,  an  English  weaver,  noticed 
that  his  wife's  spinning  wheel,  tipped  over  on  the  floor, 
kept  on  whirling  for  a  surprising  time.  Taking  a  hint 
from  this  position,  he  invented  a  machine  where  one  wheel 
turned  eight  spindles  and  spun  eight  threads  at  a  time. 
Hargreaves  called  the  new  machine  the  Jenny,  for  his  wife. 
Soon  it  was  improved  so  as  to  spin  sixteen  threads  at  a  time. 

Then  in  1771  (two  years  after  Lord  North  had  provoked 
the  "Boston  Massacre,"  and  two  years  before  he  provoked 
the  Boston  Tea  Party)  Richard  Arkwright,  an  English 
peddler,  devised  a  new  sort  of  spinner  without  spindles. 
He  ran  his  wool  or  cotton  through  a  series  of  rollers,  turning 
at  different  rates,  to  draw  out  the  thread ;  and  he  drove  his 
machine  by  water  power,  and  so  called  it  the  Water  Frame. 
The  year  after  Burgoyne's  surrender,  or  in  1779,  Samuel 
Crompton,  an  English  weaver,  ingeniously  combined  the 
best  features  of  the  Jenny  and  the  Water  Frame  in  a  machine 
which  he  called  the  Mule,  in  honor  of  this  mixed  parentage. 
With  the  Mule,  one  spinner  could  spin  two  hundred  threads 
at  a  time. 

Two  hundred  threads  seem  few  to  us,  familiar  as  we 
are  to-day  with  machinery  such  that  a  man  with  one  or  two 


THE  AWAKENING  OF  LABOR  427 

boys  winds  12,000  spools  at  once ;  but  at  the  time  the  Mule 
made  a  revolution  in  cloth  manufacturing.  Now  the 
weavers  could  not  keep  up  with  the  spinners;  and  it  was 
needful  to  improve  the  loom.  On  the  hand  loom,  threads 
were  first  drawn  out  lengthwise  on  a  frame,  making  the 
warp.  The  weaver  then  passed  his  shuttle  by  hand  back 
and  forth  between  those  threads  to  form  the  woof.  But  in 
1784  Edmund  Cartwright,  an  English  clergyman,  patented 
a  power  loom,  in  which  the  shuttle  threw  itself  back  and 
forth  automatically. 

The  next  need  was  more  cotton  to  spin  and  weave.  Whit 
ney's  Cotton  Gin  (page  345)  soon  made  it  easy  for  America 
to  furnish  that.  And,  even  sooner,  Watt's  engines  began  to 
provide  a  better  power  than  water  to  drive  the  new  machin 
ery.  Steam  was  first  used  to  drive  spinning  machinery  in 
1785.  Fifteen  years  later,  England  was  using  more  steam 
engines  than  water  wheels.  By  1800  the  age  of  steam  and  of 
machinery  had  fairly  begun  in  that  country. 

The  English  inventions  were  soon  known  in  America, 
but  they  did  not  come  into  common  use  here  for  another 
generation.  In  1800  this  country  had  only  four  steam 
engines,  and  only  four  cotton  mills  run  by  water.  The 
Industrial  Revolution  came  here  sooner  than  in  any  other 
country  after  England ;  but  even  here  it  did  not  begin  until 
the  War  of  1812  made  it  necessary  for  us,  for  a  time,  to 
manufacture  all  our  own  cloth. 

With  machinery  and  steam  power,  one  laborer  was  soon 
able  to  produce  more  wealth  than  hundreds  had  produced 
by  the  old  hand  processes.     This  ought  to  have  Andthe 
been  pure  gain  for  all  the  world,  and  especially  it  workers' 
should  have  meant  more  comfort  and  more  leisure  hves 
for  the  workers.     It  is  not  the  fault  of    Hargreaves    and 
Crompton  and  Cartwright  and  Watt  that  most  of  the  new 
wealth  went  to  a  new  class  of  capitalists :    the  fault  lay 
with  the  imperfect  organization  of  human    society.     Part 
of  the  increased  wealth  did  go,  indirectly,  to  the  common 
gain,  in  lower  prices.     Every  one  could  soon  buy  cloth  and 
hardware  cheaper  than  before  the  Industrial  Revolution. 


428  THE  AMERICA  OF  1830 

But,  even  yet,  the  workers  have  failed  to  get  their  fair 
share  of  the  world's  gain ;  and  for  many  of  them  the  In 
dustrial  Revolution  has  meant,  not  higher  life,  but  lower 
life.  Especially  was  this  true  when  that  Revolution  was 
young. 

The  new  machinery  was  costly.  Workmen  could  not 
own  it  as  they  had  owned  their  old  looms  and  spinning 
Capitalists  wheels.  Nor  did  they  know  how  to  combine  so 
and  as  to  own  it  in  groups.  It  all  passed  into  the 

etariat  hands  of  "capitalists."  The  capitalist  manu 
facturer  was  a  new  figure  in  human  society.  He  was 
not  himself  a  workman,  like  the  small  employers  in  the 
old  Domestic  system.  He  used  his  money  to  build  huge 
brick  factories,  story  on  story ;  to  fill  them  with  costly 
machinery;  to  buy  the  "raw  material"  (cotton,  wool,  iron, 
as  the  case  might  be) ;  and  to  pay  wages  to  hired  workers, 
or  "operatives."  The  "Domestic"  system  of  industry  gave 
way  to  a  new  Capitalist  system,  or  Wage  system,  or  Factory 
system. 

Under  the  old  Domestic  system,  even  in  manufacturing 
districts  like  Pennsylvania,  the  workmen  lived  in  their  own 
homes,  owned  their  own  tools,  and  varied  their  toil  (or  used 
idle  time)  by  tilling  plots  of  ground  about  their  cottages. 
Their  condition  was  more  like  that  of  the  farmer  of  to-day 
than  like  that  of  the  modern  factory  worker.  But  as  the 
Factory  system  came  in,  the  worker  was  compelled  to 
change  his  whole  manner  of  life.  He  must  reach  the  factory 
within  a  few  minutes  of  the  first  bell,  about  sunrise,  and  stay 
until  it  grew  too  dark  for  work.  So  the  capitalist  built 
long  blocks  of  ugly  tenements  near  his  factory,  for  rent; 
and  his  "hands"  moved  from  their  rural  homes,  with  garden 
spots  and  fresh  air  and  varied  industry,  into  these  crowded 
and  squalid  tenement  districts,  to  live  amid  destitution 
Life  under  anc^  disease  and  vice.  The  Factory  system  built 
the  Factory  up  towns  swiftly ;  but  these  new  towns  had  no 
fit  water  supply,  no  sewerage  system,  no  garbage 
collection.  Science  had  not  learned  how  to  care  for  these 
needs,  and  law  had  not  begun  to  wrestle  with  them. 


THE  AWAKENING  OF  LABOR  429 

Thus  the  new  manufacturing  society  was  made  up  of 
two  hostile  classes.  Under  the  Domestic  system,  appren 
tices  and  journeymen  had  expected  to  rise,  sooner  or  later, 
to  be  "masters";  and  at  all  times  they  lived  in  constant 
intercourse  with  their  employers,  who  worked  side  by  side 
with  them,  shared  their  hard  conditions,  and  had  a  sort  of 
fatherly  guardianship  over  them.  Under  the  new  system, 
a  particularly  enterprising  and  fortunate  workman  might 
now  and  then  rise  into  the  capitalist  class ;  but,  on  the 
whole,  a  distinct  and  permanent  line  divided  the  two  classes. 

The  capitalist,  too,  had  no  personal  contact  with  his 
workmen.  He  employed,  not  two  or  three,  living  in  his 
own  family,  but  hundreds  or  thousands  whom  he  never 
saw  outside  the  factory  and  whose  names  even  he  did  not 
know  except  on  the  pay  roll.  There  was  little  chance  for 
understanding  between  him  and  his  "hands." 

The  men  who  owned  and  managed  factories  and  banks 
and  canal  systems,  together  with  a  growing  body  of  specula 
tors  and  small  money-masters,  made  up  the  capi-  The 
talist  class.  They  were  keen,  forceful,  driving  "  Capitalist 
men,  with  few  interests  outside  "business."  Ab-  syst< 
sorbed  in  a  mad  race  with  one  another  for  wealth  and  power, 
they  had  little  sympathy  or  time  for  the  needs  of  the  two 
million  "operatives"  whose  lives  they  ordered  almost  as  ab 
solutely  as  Southern  planters  ordered  the  lives  of  their  two 
million  Blacks.  Like  the  planters  of  the  black  belt,  too,  they 
dwelt  mainly  in  a  small  area  —  a  narrow,  curving  band  of 
manufacturing  territory;  but  through  many  subtle  influ 
ences,  they  held  the  faithful  allegiance  of  the  whole  North 
Atlantic  section  from  the  Chesapeake  to  the  Kennebec. 
They  furnished  the  stocks  and  controlled  the  credit  of  the 
storekeepers  in  the  small  towns ;  they  endowed  the  colleges 
and  built  the  churches ;  they  gave  the  best-paying  em 
ployment  to  lawyers.  The  farmers  —  lately  followers  of 
Jefferson  —  felt  their  prosperity  bound  up  with  that  of  the 
great  industrial  towns  that  made  their  markets ;  and  even 
the  operatives  long  voted  unquestioningly  for  the  system 
which,  they  were  assured,  filled  their  meager  dinner  pails. 


430  THE  AMERICA  OF  1830 

Nor  were  any  of  these  tributary  classes  consciously  ser 
vile.  To  most  people  in  this  period  a  "captain  of  industry" 
typified  American  success.  He  was  the  natural  leader, 
honestly  admired  as  a  model  for  youth. 

This  capitalist  class  early  developed  a  keen  scent  for  special 
privilege,  to  be  secured  through  courts  and  legislatures. 
And  special  Especially  did  it  take  advantage  of  the  generous 
privilege  Americanism  of  South  and  West  just  after  the  War 
of  1812  to  intensify  the  "protection"  for  its  pet  industries  in 
the  tariffs  of  the  period.  From  this  it  reaped  a  rich  harvest. 
Between  1820  and  1830  the  output  of  American  factories 
rose  sixfold.  In  1830  its  value  was  a  half  greater  than  that 
of  all  the  produce  of  Southern  plantations  —  though  the 
planters  had  an  investment  five  times  that  of  the  factory 
owners.  Since  the  factory  workers  got  only  a  bare  living,  this 
huge  factory  output  meant  immense  profits  for  the  capitalist. 

Between  1800  and  1825  the  mass  of  hired  labor  in  America 
shifted  from  the  farm  to  the  factory.  The  factory  oper 
ative,  like  the  capitalist,  was  a  new  figure.  And,  unlike 
the  capitalist,  he  was  a  helpless  one.  He  furnished  noth^ 
ing  but  his  hands.  Numbers  of  men  wanted  work ;  and 
much  factory  work  could  be  done  by  women  and  children, 
—  especially  in  cloth  manufactures,  where  it  consisted 
largely  in  turning  levers  or  tying  broken  threads  or  cleaning 
rollers.  Until  the  operatives  learned  to  combine,  so  as  to 
bargain  collectively,  the  capitalist  fixed  wages  and  hours 
and  conditions  as  he  liked. 

Carpenters  and  masons  commonly  worked  from  sunrise  to 
sunset  —  just  as  farm  laborers  did.  Those  long  hours  were 
The  long  terribly  hard ;  but  they  were  endurable  because 
day  they  were  spent  in  fresh  air,  amid  outdoor  scenes, 

in  interesting  and  varied  activity.  But  this  long  labor  day  of 
thirteen  or  fifteen  hours  (for  much  of  the  year)  was  now  car 
ried  into  the  factory.  There  it  was  unendurable  and  ruinous, 
because  of  foul  air,  poor  light,  incessant,  nerve-racking 
noise  of  machinery,  and  because  there  it  crushed  women 
and  children.  Hope  Factory  (Rhode  Island),  in  1831,  rang 


THE  AWAKENING  OF  LABOR  431 

its  first  bell  ten  minutes  before  sunrise.  Five  minutes 
after  sunrise  the  gates  were  locked  against  tardy  comers, 
not  to  open  again  until  eight  at  night.  A  committee  of 
laborers  claimed  that  the  employer  stretched  this  horrible 
"day"  by  twenty  or  twenty-five  minutes  more,  by  always 
keeping  the  factory  clock  slow.  The  only  respites  from  toil 
during  the  fifteen  or  sixteen  hours  were  twenty -five  minutes 
for  breakfast  and  a  like  period  for  dinner,  —  both  meals 
being  cold  lunches  brought  by  the  operatives.  And  more 
than  half  the  operatives  were  children.  This  was  not  an 
exceptional  instance :  it  was  typical.  At  Paterson,  New 
Jersey,  women  and  children  were  at  their  work  in  the 
mills  by  4  :  30  in  the  morning.  The  Eagle  Mill  (at  Griswold, 
Connecticut)  called  on  its  employees,  in  1832,  for  fifteen 
hours  and  ten  minutes  of  actual  toil. 

Lowell  was  a  notable  exception.  No  child  under  twelve 
was  employed  there;  the  day  was  "short";  and  all  condi 
tions  were  unusually  favorable.  At  4 :  30  A.M.  the  bell 
summoned  the  workers  from  their  beds.  At  five  they  must 
be  within  the  mills,  and  the  gates  were  closed.  With  a  half 
hour,  later,  for  breakfast,  and  forty-five  minutes  for 
"dinner,"  the  labor  continued  till  7  P.M.  The  manufactur 
ing  company  provided  plain  lodgings  and  arrangements  for 
cheap  board  at  $1.50  per  week.  Skillful  workers  (paid  by 
the  piece)  might  possibly  earn  twice  that  amount.  The 
employees  were  almost  all  farmers'  daughters.  After  their 
fourteen  hours  a  day  in  the  factory,  these  vigorous  young 
women,  for  one  generation,  had  energy  for  literary  clubs 
and  social  activities.  Churches  and  lectures  arranged 
their  meetings  late  enough  in  the  evening  to  be  attended  by 
these  eager  working  girls,  —  who  also  wrote,  edited,  and 
published  a  periodical  of  considerable  literary  merit. 

The  working  class  were  first  aroused  against  this  long  labor 
day  by  a  growing  conviction  of  the  need  of  schooling    Absence 
for  factory  children.     In  the  Massachusetts  legisla-  of  schooling 
ture  of  1825,  a  committee  on  education  sent  inquiries 
to  the  mayors  and  aldermen  of  all  Massachusetts 
factory  towns  regarding  hours   of   labor   for   children   and 


432  THE  AMERICA  OF  1830 

opportunities  for  schooling.  The  replies  were  as  favor 
able  as  shame,  or  local  pride,  could  make  them ;  but  no 
town  claimed  less  than  eleven  hours  of  steady  work  per  day 
for  children  (from  six  to  seventeen  years  old),  and  only 
two  reported  so  short  a  day.  The  "dawn  to  dark"  day 
was  frankly  reported  in  many  cases.  Seekunk  stated 
that  its  child  operatives  "work  twelve  hours;  Some  may 
get  eight  weeks'  Schoolg."  1  Waltham  failed  to  state 
the  hours  of  labor,  but  said,  "As  much  oppy  for  Schoolg 
as  can  be  expected"  (!)  Bellingham  honestly  declared, 
"Work  twelve  hours  pr  day.  No  oppy  for  School  except 
by  employg  substitutes."  [This  long  labor  day  meant 
every  day  in  the  year,  save  Sundays,  be  it  remembered,  except 
in  a  few  places  where  conditions  made  it  more  profitable  to 
close  the  factories  for  some  eight  weeks  of  the  winter.] 
Southb ridge  reported  "Average  twelve  hours.  These  chil 
dren  are  better  off  than  their  neighbors"  ( !)  Boston  said  con 
cisely,  "No  Schoolg."  Fall  River,  with  unconscious  irony, 
stated,  "Work  all  day.  There  are  good  public  and  private 
S.  and  a  free  Sunday  School." 

These  horrible  conditions  show  even  more  plainly  in  a 
temperate  statement  by  "Many  Operatives"  in  the  Mechan 
ics9  Free  Press  for  August  21,  1830,  regarding  children  in  the 
Philadelphia  factories  :  - 

"It  is  a  well-known  fact  that  the  principal  part  of  the  helps  in 
cotton  factories  consist  of  boys  and  girls,  we  may  safely  say 
from  six  to  seventeen  years  of  age.  .  .  .  We  are  confident  that  not 
more  than  one-sixth  of  the  boys  and  girls  employed  in  such  factories 
are  capable  of  reading  or  writing  their  own  names.  We  have  known 
many  instances  where  parents  who  are  capable  of  giving  their 
children  a  trifling  education,  one  at  a  time,  [have  been]  deprived 
of  that  opportunity  by  their  employers'  threats  that  if  they  did  take 
one  child  from  their  employ,  a  short  time,  for  school,  such  family 

1  The  quotations  from  these  replies  are  given  from  a  tabulated  summary  made 
by  the  committee  in  its  report  to  the  legislature.  The  report  seems  never  to  have 
been  printed  until  it  was  reproduced  recently  in  the  Documentary  History  of 
American  Industrial  Society  (10  vols. ;  edited  by  John  R.  Commons,  in  association 
with  four  other  scholars).  Most  of  the  other  facts  about  labor  stated  in  pp.  431- 
442  are  based  upon  documents  given  in  volumes  V  and  VI  of  that  work. 


THE  AWAKENING  OF  LABOR  433 

must  leave  the  employment  .  .  .  and  we  have  even  known  such 
threats  put  in  execution.  ..." 

In  1832,  at  a  Boston  convention  of  New  England  Mechanics 
and  Workingmen,  a  committee  reported  upon  the  schooling 
of  working-class  children  with  much  detail.  The  summary 
of  that  report  runs  :  — 

"  The  children  .  .  .  employed  in  manufactories  constitute  about 
two  fifths  of  the  whole  number  of  persons  employed.  .  .  .  On  a 
general  average  the  youth  and  children  .  .  .  are  compelled  to 
labor  at  least  thirteen  and  a  half,  perhaps  fourteen,  hours  per 
day,  factory  time.  .  .  .  Your  committee  also  learn  that  in  general 
no  child  can  be  taken  from  a  Cotton*  Mill,  to  be  placed  at  school, 
for  any  length  of  time,  however  short,  without  certain  loss  of 
employ.  .  .  .  Nor  are  parents,  having  a  number  of  children  in  a 
mill,  allowed  to  withdraw  one  or  more  without  withdrawing  the  whole 
—  for  which  reason,  as  such  children  are  generally  the  offspring  of 
parents  whose  poverty  has  made  them  entirely  dependent  on  the  will 
of  their  employers,  they  are  very  seldom  taken  from  the  mills  to 
be  placed  in  school.  ...  It  is  with  regret  that  your  committee 
are  absolutely  forced  to  the  conclusion  that  the  only  opportunities 
allowed  to  children  generally,  employed  in  manufactories,  to 
obtain  an  education,  are  on  the  Sabbath  and  after  half -past  8 
o'clock  of  the  evening  of  other  days.  Your  committee  cannot, 
therefore,  without  the  violation  of  a  solemn  trust,  withhold  their 
unanimous  opinion  that  the  opportunities  allowed  to  children 
employed  in  manufactories  to  obtain  an  education  suitable  to  the 
character  of  American  freemen,  and  to  the  wives  and  mothers  of 
such,  are  altogether  inadequate  to  the  purpose ;  that  the  evils  com 
plained  of  are  unjust  and  cruel ;  and  are  no  less  than  the  sacrifice 
of  the  dearest  interests  of  thousands  of  the  rising  generation  to  the 
cupidity  and  avarice  of  their  employers." 

Labor,  too,  had  lost  its  old  lever  of  free  land.     Near  the 
Eastern  cities,  land  was  no  longer  "free."     Even  in  the 
West  the  rage  for  speculation  in  land  forced  the  real  Labor  and 
settler  either  to  pay  unreasonable  prices  to  private  the  land 
holders,  or  to  take  undesirable  lands,  or    to  go  far  from 
markets  and  neighbors,  —  so  that  his  life  was  more  barren 
and  his  profits  lost  in  the  cost  of  transportation. 


434  THE  AMERICA  OF  1830 

Still  the  public  domain  in  that  vast  section  did  offer  hope 
to  many  individuals  from  the  East,  especially  if  they  had  a 
little  capital  and  much  self-reliance.  But  such  emigrants 
went  mainly  from  the  farm  or  the  small  village.  The  public 
domain  did  not  much  help  the  factory  class.  How  should 
a  penniless  factory  family  get  team  and  wagon  for  the  long 
journey  to  the  West?  Or  food  and  supplies  for  that  jour 
ney  and  for  the  hard  months  afterward  while  the  first  crop 
was  coming  to  harvest  ?  Or  tools  and  seed  to  get  in  a  crop  ? 
How,  indeed,  should  the  man  get  the  $100  necessary  to 
secure  the  smallest  farm  the  government  would  sell  him, 
or  the  $1000  necessary  for  a  simple  equipment?  Or,  if  he 
took  the  chance  of  "squatting"  on  government  land,  with 
out  paying  down  the  price,  how  should  he  keep  some 
sharp-eyed  speculator  from  buying  the  place  at  the  first  gov 
ernment  sale  —  so  reaping  all  the  profits  of  his  toil  ?  Pre 
emption  and  homestead  laws  were  still  in  the  future,  though 
both  the  West  and  the  Eastern  labor  party  were  already 
calling  for  them.  In  the  absence  of  such  laws,  the  poor  man 
from  the  East  who  sought  a  home  on  the  public  domain 
took  heroic  risks. 

Labor,  then,  must  depend  upon  itself,  and  wage  its  fight 
in  its  own  Eastern  home.  So  the  workers  sought  strength 
Early  labor  m  organization.  Labor  "unions"  had  appeared 
unions,  ^  before  1800,  but  only  for  "mutual  insurance"  and 
before  1820  Q^er  benevolent  and  social  purposes.  The  hint 
that  such  organizations  might  be  used  in  class  war  seems 
to  have  come  from  the  side  of  capital.  Soon  after  1800, 
the  newspapers  begin  to  notice  "combinations"  of  capi 
talists  to  raise  prices.  Then  the  labor  combinations  began 
to  ask.  for  shorter  hours  and  better  wages,  and  finally  to 
"strike"  for  them.  Between  1802  and  1807,  New  York, 
Philadelphia,  Boston,  and  Baltimore  (about  all  the  cities  of 
that  time)  had  one  or  more  strikes. 

A  few  progressive  thinkers,  like  William  Ellery  Chan- 
ning  and  Horace  Mann,  saw  that  the  labor  question  was  the 
question  of  human  welfare ;  but  in  general  the  "  respectable 
classes  "  long  looked  on  all  labor  unions  as  iniquitous  and 


THE  AWAKENING  OF  LABOR  435 

revolutionary  conspiracies.  Like  the  old  French  political  des 
potism  (page  13),  so  in  this  industrial  matter,  the  capitalist 
classes  held  it  proper  that  each  weak  worker  should  speak 
for  himself,  and  that  "no  one  should  speak  for  the  whole." 
In  Boston,  a  "combination"  of  merchants  announced  in 
the  public  press  that  their  "union"  had  pledged  itself  to 
drive  the  shipwrights,  caulkers,  and  gravers  of  that  city  to 
abandon  "unions"  or  starve,  and  that  they  had  subscribed 
$20,000  for  that  purpose.  (It  is  curious  to  note  that  Monroe, 
in  one  of  his  messages  to  Congress  during  the  terrible  panic 
of  1819,  had  congratulated  manufacturers  on  the  "fall  in 
the  price  of  labor,  so  favorable  to  the  success  of  domestic 
manufactures."  And  Hamilton,  in  urging  that  America 
should  develop  manufactures,  wrote  with  enthusiasm  of  the 
fact  that  in  Great  Britain  four  sevenths  of  the  employees 
in  the  cotton  factories  were  women  and  children,  the  greater 
proportion  being  children,  "and  many  of  a  tender  age"  !) 

The  attitude  of  the  propertied  classes  was  reflected  in  the 
courts.  Here  the  unions  found  their  chief  obstacle.  The 
courts  promptly  put  down  this  first  series  of  early  Labor  and 
strikes  by  punishing  the  leaders  sternly  for  "con-  the  courts 
spiracy"  -  under  the  odious  principles  of  the  English  Com 
mon  Law.  In  1825,  it  is  true,  a  New  York  jury  destroyed 
the  terror  of  such  prosecutions  for  a  time  by  awarding  a  fine 
of  only  one  dollar  for  the  "crime"  of  "conspiring  to  raise 
wages."  But  not  till  1842  did  any  court  recognize  that 
workmen  had  the  same  right  of  collective  bargaining  as 
had  always  been  possessed  without  question  by  employers. 
In  that  year  the  Massachusetts  Supreme  Court  held  that 
labor  organizations  might  legally  try  to  advance  wages 
"by  rules  binding  solely  on  members." 

Another  obstacle  to  the  early  labor  movement  was  the 
fact  that  all  newspapers  were  bitterly  and  contemptuously 
hostile.     The  working  class  had  no  way  to  get  their  Labor  and 
grievances    or  their    program  before   the  public.   the  press 
But  in  1825  George  Henry  Evans  and  Frederick  W.  Evans 
(recent  English  immigrants)  began  to  publish  the  Working- 
man *s  Advocate  at  New  York.     Two  years  later,  the  Median- 


436  THE  AMERICA  OF  1830 

ics'  Free  Press  appeared  at  Philadelphia.  Then  "unions" 
multiplied  swiftly,  and  a  strenuous  labor  war  began.  The 
twelve  years  between  the  founding  of  the  first  labor  paper 
(1825)  and  the  great  "panic"  of  1837  saw  the  first  real  labor 
movement  in  America. 

Later  organization  in  this  period  had  three  stages. 

First  each  important  trade  in  each  large  city  organized  its 
"trade  association."  These  associations  were  local;  and 
Labor  or-  one  trade  had  no  connection  even  with  another  of 
ganization,  the  same  city.  But  in  1827  the  Journeymen  Car 
penters'  association  in  Philadelphia  struck  for 
a  ten-hour  day.  The  struggle  was  a  stubborn  one,  and 
other  trade  associations  in  the  city  gave  sympathy  and 
some  help  to  the  carpenters.  The  strike  failed.  But  it 
had  taught  the  need  of  wider  union  among  workingmen 
to  gain  their  common  end ;  and  the  next  year  the  many 
trade  associations  of  Philadelphia  federated  in  the 
"Mechanics'  Union  of  Trade  Associations.7' l 

This  second  stage  in  labor  organization  spread  swiftly. 
New  York  had  its  General  Trades'  Union  in  1831,  growing 
out  of  a  successful  carpenters'  strike  which  had  been  sup 
ported  actively  by  other  trades.  Like  Unions  were  soon 
found  in  the  remaining  large  cities.  Such  a  federation  held 
considerable  authority  over  the  several  local  "associations" 
which  composed  it.  It  usually  maintained  a  Trades'  Union 
hall,  with  courses  of  public  lectures  and  a  labor  paper,  and 
it  took  an  active  part  in  supporting  strikes  (when  approved 
by  it)  from  the  general  treasury  and  by  public  meetings. 

The  third  stage  of  organization  came  in  1834,  when  the 
various  city  Trades'  Unions  organized  a  national  federation. 
This  "republic  of  labor"  held  conventions  in  1834,  1835, 
1836,  and  1837 ;  but  the  organization  was  imperfect,  and  in 
1837  it  was  ingulfed  in  the  industrial  depression  that  fol 
lowed  the  panic  of  that  year  (page  472). 

1  Terms  have  shifted.  The  appropriate  name,  Trades'  Union,  has  been  cor 
rupted  into  "trade-union"  for  the  name  of  the  association  of  workers  in  one  trade; 
and  consequently  the  more  general  union  has  had  to  seek  new  names,  —  such  as 
Trades'  Assembly,  or  Trades'  Council. 


THE  FIRST  LABOR  MOVEMENT  437 

Recent  extension  of  the  franchise  had  made  voters  out 
of  the  mechanics  (page  453),  and,  from  the  first,  the  labor 
organizations  turned  to  political  activity.  On 
August  11,  1828,  the  Philadelphia  Trades'  Union,  ' 
at  a  public  meeting,  recommended  "to  the  Mechanics  and 
Working  Men  of  the  city  to  support  such  men  only  for  the 
City  Council  and  State  Legislature,  as  shall  have  pledged 
themselves  .  .  .  to  support  the  interests  and  claims  of  the  Work 
ing  Classes."  The  "Delegates  of  the  Working  Men,"  ac 
cordingly,  sent  a  circular  letter  to  fourteen  candidates  for 
the  legislature  "to  obtain  your  views  in  relation  to  the 
following  subjects :  - 

"First.     An  equal  and  general  system  of  Education. 

"Second.  The  banking  system,  and  all  other  exclusive  monop 
olies. 

"Third.  Lotteries:  whether  a  total  abolishment  of  them  is 
not  essential  to  the  moral  as  well  as  to  the  pecuniary  interest  of 
society."  l 

Then,  after  a  strong  paragraph  expressing  the  special 
interest  of  the  working  class  in  ihe  first  question,  the  circular 
concludes,-  "If  your  views  on  these  matters  should  be 
in  accordance  with  those  we  represent,  we  request  you  to 
allow  us  to  place  your  name  upon  our  ticket." 

Soon,  definite  Workingmen's  parties  appeared  in  various 
localities.     In  1830  in  New  York  a  " Workingman's  party" 
nominated  a  State  ticket.     Its  candidate  for  gov-  Labor 
ernor  got  only  3000  votes,  but  three  labor  candi-  Parties 
dates  were  chosen  to  the  legislature,  and  Ely  Moore  (presi 
dent  of  the  New  York  City   Trades'  Union)  was  sent  to 
Congress.     In  1834,  in  far-away  eastern  Tennessee,  a  labor 
party  brought  the  tailor  Andrew  Johnson  into  public  life  as 
alderman  in  a  mountain  village.     And  a  Boston  Convention 

1  "There  are  at  present,"  says  another  address  from  the  same  source  a  little 
later,  "not  less  than  200  lottery  offices  in  Philadelphia,  and  as  many,  if  not  more, 
persons  engaged  in  hawking  tickets."  Special  complaint  is  directed  at  these 
"itinerant  venders"  who  "assail  the  poor  man  at  his  labor,  enter  the  abode  of  the 
needy,  and,  by  holding  out  false  promises  of  wealth,  induce  him  to  hazard  his 
little  all  in  the  demoralizing  system." 


438  THE  AMERICA  OF  1830 

of  the  "New  England  Association  of  Farmers,  Mechanics, 
and  Other  Working  men"  urged  "the  organization  of  the 
whole  laboring  population"  in  order  to  revise  "our  social  and 
political  system,"  hoping  "to  imbue  .  .  .  our  off  spring  with 
.  .  .  abhorrence  for  the  usurpation  of  aristocracy  ...  so 
.  .  .  that  they  shall  dedicate  their  lives  to  a  completion  of 
the  work  which  their  ancestors  commenced  in  their  struggle 
for  national,  and  their  sires  have  continued  in  their  contest 
for  personal,  independence." 

But  no  national  labor  party  was  formed.  The  old  political 
parties  began  at  once  to  bid  eagerly  for  the  labor  vote,  and, 
bit  by  bit,  much  of  its  program  was  placed  in  the  statute 
books.  In  New  York,  one  wing  of  the  new  Democratic 
party  was  especially  friendly.  This  was  the  "Equal 
Rights"  party,  or  the  Loco  Focos,  who,  like  the  labor  or 
ganizations,  opposed  all  special  privileges  and  the  monop 
oly  of  the  United  States  Bank.  In  1835  the  Loco  Focos 
absorbed  bodily  the  Workingman's  party  in  New  York 
State.  Soon  after,  the  labor  organizations  in  other  States 
were  lost  in  the  fully  developed  Democratic  party.  For 
some  years  that  party  remained  in  large  degree  a  working- 
man's  party.  When  it  surrendered  to  the  Slave  Power,  the 
political  labor  movement  received  a  fatal  blow.  The  rem 
nants  of  the  labor  forces  made  a  leading  element  in  the 
various  Liberty  and  Free  Soil  parties  (below),  but  the 
movement  for  a  distinct  labor  organization  did  not  revive 
until  after  the  Civil  War. 

The  strikes  of  the  years  1825-1837  aimed :  (1)  to  raise 
wages;  (2)  to  secure  what  we  now  call  the  "closed 
Aims  of  shop"  (i.e.  to  compel  the  employment  of  union 
Labor  in  labor  only,  to  the  exclusion  of  non-union  men, 
known  even  then  as  "rats"  and  "scabs"); 
and  (3)  to  shorten  the  working-day  to  ten  hours.  But, 
in  its  political  action,  the  Workingman's  party  turned 
away  from  these  problems,  vital  as  they  were,  to  broader 
social  reforms.  They  sought  to  abolish  monopolies  and 
lotteries  and  imprisonment  for  debt ;  l  to  exempt  a  work- 

1  In  the  early  thirties  thousands  were  still  imprisoned  for  debt  each  year. 


THE  FIRST  LABOR  MOVEMENT  439 

ingman's  home  and  tools  from  seizure  for  debt ;  to  give 
him  a  lien  on  his  work  for  his  wages ;  to  make  it  easier 
for  him  to  get  a  home  out  of  the  public  domain ;  to  give 
women  "equal  rights  with  men  in  all  respects";  and  to 
establish  a  noble  system  of  public  schools  —  far  ahead  of  any 
practice  in  that  day.  The  closed-shop  principle  failed 
when  the  unions  fell  in  the  "panic"  of  1837.  Rights  for 
women,  too,  had  to  wait  long.  The  other  demands  were 
attained  fully  or  in  fair  measure. 

1.  This   labor   movement   was   the  first   clear   demand   in 
America   that   society   should   put    "man   above   the   dollar." 
Forty  years  before,  the  makers  of  the  Constitu-  Man  and 
tion  agreed  that  the  end  of  government  was  to  pro-  the  dollar 
tect  property.     But  the  laborer  now  demanded,  as  a  right, 
that  the  rich  should  help  pay  for  his  children's  schooling ; 
that  his  person  should  no  longer  be  seized  for  debt,  nor  his 
means  of  livelihood ;    and  that,  when  a  creditor,  his  wages 
should  have  a  first  lien,  ahead  of  other  creditors'  claims. 
These  demands,  disregarding  the  old  "rights"  of  property, 
rested  on  the  broad  claim  that  they  aimed  to  advance  general 
human    welfare.     Many  good  people  called  them  commu 
nistic.     But  modern  society  has  come  to  see  all  this  as  did 
the  workingmen  of  the  thirties.     The  laborer's  wages,  we 
agree,  should  have  preference  over  the  capitalist's  profits. 
The  one  may  add  to  the  graces  of  life  for  the  few  :  the  other 
means  life  itself,  and  a  decent  standard  of  living,  for  the  many. 

2.  The  demand  for  a  ten-hour  day,  in  place  of  the  inhuman 
dawn-to-dark  day,  was  long  resisted  by  the  employer  class  as 
though  it  would  overturn  all  social  order.     When  A  ten-hour 
the  carpenter  journeymen  of  Philadelphia  organ-  dfly 

ized  in  1827  to  get  that  shorter  day  (page  436),  the  employers 
united  in  an  address  to  the  public,  in  which :  (1)  they  com 
plained  of  the  attempt  to  "deprive  employers  of  about  one- 
fifth  part  of  their  usual  time"  ;  (2)  they  "regretted"  the  for 
mation  of  "a  society  that  has  a  tendency  to  subvert  good  order, 
and  coerce  or  mislead  those  who  have  been  industriously 
pursuing  their  avocation  and  honestly  maintaining  their 


440  THE  AMERICA  OF  1830 

families";  and  (3)  they  declared  their  united  resolution 
not  to  "employ  any  Journeyman  who  will  not  give  his 
time  and  labor  as  usual,  in  as  much  as  we  believe  the  present 
mode  has  not  been,  and  is  not  now,  oppressive  to  the  workmen." 
The  journeymen  replied  with  an  appeal  for  public  sympathy  : 
"Citizens  of  Philadelphia,  to  you  we  appeal ;  with  you  rests 
the  ultimate  success  or  failure  of  our  cause.  Will  you  not 
assist  us  ?  Remember  we  are  men  .  .  .  and  say  will  you 
combine  with  our  employers  to  force  us  to  be  slaves?" 

The  strike  failed,  as  did  several  others  in  Philadelphia  for 
the  same  purpose.  But  public  sympathy  was  won  for  the 
cause,  and  monster  petitions  began  to  pour  in  upon  the 
city  government  to  adopt  the  shorter  day  for  workingmen 
employed  for  the  city.  June  4,  1835,  the  city  council  yielded, 
and  private  concerns  slowly  followed  this  example. 

In  Baltimore,  too,  the  same  year,  a  general  strike  estab 
lished  the  ten-hour  day  for  all  business,  public  and  private. 
But,  in  the  Boston  district,  three  great  strikes  for  this 
object  were  crushed  by  irresistible  combinations  of  capi 
talists  pledged  publicly  to  force  their  employees  to  keep  the 
old  "dawn-to-dark"  day.  Success  there,  and  in  the  rest 
of  the  country,  came  through  the  example  of  the  Federal  gov 
ernment.  Van  Buren  (Jackson's  successor)  had  been  closely 
associated  with  the  New  York  Loco  Focos  ;  and  the  National 
VanBuren's  Convention  of  Trades'  Unions  in  1836  brought 
"  ten-hour  all  possible  pressure  to  bear  upon  him,  during  his 
campaign  for  the  Presidency.  In  1840,  as  President, 
Van  Buren  redeemed  his  promises.  He  issued  a  notable  order 
directing  a  ten-hour  day  in  the  navy  yards  and  in  all  "public 
establishments"  of  the  government.  During  the  next  ten 
years  ten  hours  became  the  regular  labor  day  for  artisans  and 
factories  throughout  most  of  the  country,  though  in  some 
districts,  especially  in  New  England,  a  twelve-hour  day  re 
mained  the  rule  down  to  the  Civil  War. 

3.  Foremost  in  the  program  of  the  workingmen  stood  the 
demand  for  free  schools  supported  by  public  taxes  and  con 
trolled  by  the  public  will.  In  New  England  this  ancient 


THE  FIRST  LABOR  MOVEMENT 


441 


principle   of    the    Puritans    had    been    largely    aoandoned, 
and  the  surviving  public   schools   were   much   inferior   to 
the  private  schools.     In   New   York  and   Penn 
sylvania    (outside    Philadelphia,    Pittsburg,    and  our  free 
Lancaster  County),  all  public  schools  were  pauper  sch°o1 

«      ».  v  •  £  i-i      system 

schools  —  cheap  private  enterprises  tor  poor  chil 
dren  only,  supported  by  appropriations  from  the  county 
boards.     The   labor  unions   protested   indignantly    against 


.  -y- 


2.0** 


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; 

6.3o 
6>3o 

7.3o 


7.4* 


toae 


n. 
/z. 

IL3o 
/2.30 


/JO 
1. 10 


I/O 

1. 10 


X     4jJvUtL  X 


TIME  CARD  OF  MACHINE  SHOP  IN  PROVIDENCE,  R.  I.,  FOR  1848.     From  Ida  Tarbell's 

Golden  Rule  in  Business. 


They 


mme 


the  pauper  school,  and  against  any  "class"  school. 
called  for  a  "general  and  equal  education  .  .  . 
diately  under  the  control  and  suffrage  of  the  people,"  not 
"as  charity  .  .  .  but  as  of  right,"  "for  every  child  in  the 
State,  from  the  lowest  branch  of  the  infant  school  to  the 
lecture  rooms  of  practical  science."  l  They  anticipated 
also  the  modern  demands  for  the  kindergarten  and  for 

1  These  quoted  phrases  are  all  taken  from  two  of  many  reports  on  this  matter 
adopted  by  the  Mechanics'  Union  of  Philadelphia.     They  are  typical. 


442  THE  AMERICA  OF  1830 

industrial  training.  The  documents  are  too  long  to  quote 
and  too  many  to  be  even  indicated ;  but  they  are  noble 
reading.  One  brief  excerpt  must  suffice.  In  February, 
1830,  a  committee  of  the  Philadelphia  Mechanics'  Union 
reported  to  a  meeting  of  "the  friends  of  general  and  equal 
education"  a  long  and  remarkable  statement  on  conditions 
in  Pennsylvania,  with  a  draft  of  a  bill  to  correct  the  evils. 
Three  evenings  were  devoted  by  the  meeting  to  discussion 
of  the  report,  after  which  it  was  unanimously  adopted.  The 
report  was  widely  copied  in  labor  papers.  It  protests  against 
the  absence  of  all  schools  in  many  districts,  the  pauper 
character  of  such  as  exist,  their  limited  instruction,  and  the 
absence  of  any  attempt  to  supply  a  "judicious  infant  train 
ing"  for  children  under  five.  Their  own  bill,  the  committee 
claim,  will  extend  schools  throughout  the  whole  common 
wealth ;  will  place  them  "immediately  under  the  control 
and  suffrage  of  the  people";  and  "its  benefits  and 
privileges  will  not,  as  at  present,  be  limited,  as  an  act 
of  charity,  to  the  poor  alone,  but  will  extend  equally 
and  of  right  to  all  classes,  and  be  supported  at  the  ex 
pense  of  all." 

Toward  this  call  for  free  schools  for  the  people,  the  capital 
istic  press  adopted  a  tone  of  condescending  reproof.  It  re- 
And  the  minded  the  workers  that  more  education  was  al- 
capitaiist  ready  attainable  by  the  poor  in  America  than 
anywhere  else.  Much  more  could  never  be  expected. 
"  The  peasant  must  labor  during  those  hours  of  the  day  which 
his  wealthy  neighbor  can  give  to  abstract  culture  :  otherwise 
the  earth  would  not  yield  enough  for  the  subsistence  of  all." 
And  again,  "Education  .  .  .  must  be  the  work  of  individuals. 
.  .  .  If  a  government  concern,  nothing  could  prevent  it  from 
becoming  a  political  job."  Many  leading  papers  reviled  the 
idea  of  free  public  schools  as  "Agrarianism"  or  "an  arbi 
trary  division  of  property."  And  one  editor  deplores  the 
taking  away  from  "the  more  thriving  members"  of  the 
working  classes  "one  of  their  chief  incitements  to  industry, 
—  the  hope  of  earning  the  means  of  educating  their  chil 
dren."  Indeed,  it  is  hard  to  find  any  of  the  hoary  argu- 


THE  INTELLECTUAL  AWAKENING  443 

ments,  still  furbished  anew  against  every  democratic  pro 
posal,  which  were  not  worn  threadbare  in  the  thirties  in 
opposition  to  a  free-school  system. 

III.   INTELLECTUAL  AND   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

Throughout  the  East  in  1830,  we  have  noted,  elementary 
public  schools  were  lacking  or  poor.     Their  revival  was  owing 
first  of  all  to  the  persistent  demand  by  the  work-  Horace 
ingmen.     That  agitation  prepared  the  ground  for  Mann 
the  work  of  humanitarian  reformers  led  by  Horace  Mann. 
Through    Mann's    efforts,    Massachusetts   created  a  State 
Board    of    Education    in    1837    and    established    the    first 
American  Normal  School  in  1839.     By  such  forces,  a  good 
system  of  "common  schools"  soon  spread  over  the  Eastern 
States. 

Meantime  the  Northwest,  where  all  men  were  working- 
men,  was  setting  up,  on  paper  at  least,  a  complete  system  of 
free  public  education,  such  as  the  workingmen  of  Education 
the  East  were  vainly  asking  for.     In  the  West,   in  the  West 
elementary  schools  drew  some  help  from  the  national  land 
grant  in  the  Survey  Ordinance  (page  255),  and  State  "uni 
versities"  were  founded   early  to  save  the  national  grant 
for  "higher  institutions  of  learning"   (page  256).   A  state 
It  was  natural  therefore  for  the  West  to  try  to  system 
link  primary  school  and  university  by  public  "  high-schools," 
so  as  to  form  a  complete  State  system.     The  constitution  of 
Indiana  in  1816  declared  it  the  duty  of  the  legislature  to 
establish  "a  general  system  of  education,  ascending  in  regular 
graduation  from  township  schools   to  a    State   University,  - 
wherein  tuition  shall  be  gratis  and  equally  open  to  all" 

In  practice,  however,  private  academies  made  the  chief 
link  between  elementary  schools  and  college  for  two  genera 
tions  more.  Even  the  primary  schools  were  often  more 
imposing  on  paper  than  in  fact ;  and  in  many  States  the 
land  grants  were  wasted  or  stolen  by  incompetent  or  venal 
politicians.  Still,  by  1840,  public  schools  were  frequent 
enough  in  the  Northwest,  as  in  the  Northeast,  so  that  a 


444  THE  AMERICA  OF  1830 

poor  boy  with  ambition  and  self-denial  could  usually  get 
at  least  "a  common  school  education." 

"Higher  education"  made  even  more  progress  than  did 
the  common  schools.  The  Western  "universities"  were 
paper  universities  for  some  time  more;  but  the  "small 
college"  multiplied  in  numbers  and  grew  toward  high 
standards  and  enlarged  usefulness,  especially  in  the  North 
east.  Amherst,  Bowdoin,  Dartmouth,  Hobart,  Williams, 
in  that  section,  had  multitudes  of  ambitious  imitators  in  the 
Southern  and  Northwestern  States.  Every  Southern  planter 
sent  his  sons  to  college,  as  a  matter  of  course,  —  very  often 
to  the  larger  Northern  institutions.  In  proportion  to  the 
White  population,  therefore,  the  South  had  more  youth  in 
college,  down  to  the  Civil  War,  than  any  other  section.  In 
1830  Oberlin,  in  Ohio,  opened  its  doors  to  women.  No  other 
institution  of  equal  rank  did  so  for  twenty  years  more ; 
but  many  "seminaries"  for  girls  soon  appeared. 

The  first  real  flowering  in  American  literature  came  just 
after  1830.  America's  only  earlier  distinction  in  letters  had 
American  been  in  political  oratory.  In  this  field,  from  1812 
letters  to  1830)  Webster,  Clay,  and  Calhoun  sustained  the 

best  traditions  of  the  Revolutionary  days ;  and  those  same 
years  saw  also  the  early  work  of  Irving,  Cooper,  Simms,  and 
Bryant.  All  these  long  continued  to  grow  in  fame.  And 
now,  between  1830  and  1845.  began  the  public  career  of 
Edward  Everett  in  oratory;  of  Emerson,  Hawthorne,  Holmes, 
Longfellow,  Lowell,  Poe,  and  Whittier  in  the  literature  of 
creative  imagination  and  spiritual  power;  of  Bancroft, 
Prescott,  Palfrey,  and  Sparks  in  historical  composition ;  of 
Kent  and  Story  in  legal  commentary ;  of  Audubon,  Agassiz, 
Dana,  Maury,  and  Asa  Gray  in  science.  Noah  Webster's 
Dictionary  was  published  in  1828 ;  ten  years  later,  the 
Smithsonian  Institution  was  founded ;  and,  midway  be 
tween,  appeared  the  first  penny  daily,  the  New  York  Sun. 

New  England  had  the  chief  glory  in  this  literary  out 
burst  ;  but  all  the  old  sections  shared  in  it,  and  the 
Northwest  gave  it  as  eager  appreciation  as  New  England 
itself.  The  Southern  aristocracy  had  little  sympathy  with 


THE  INTELLECTUAL  AWAKENING 


445 


"Yankee"  literature,  tinged  as  most  of  it  was  with  anti- 
slavery  sentiment,  but  clung  conservatively  to  the  old 
English  classics  and  to  such  moderns  as  Scott,  along  with 
its  own  representatives  in  the  lists  above. 

The  finest  part  of  this  literary  movement  was  rooted  in 
a  New  England  religious  awakening.     Between  1815  and 
1830,  Unitarianism,  organized  by  William  Ellery  unitarian- 
Channing,    had    deeply    modified    New    England  ism  and 
thought.     Unitarianism    was    an    intellectual    re-  democracy 
volt  against  the  somber  and  rigid  doctrines  of  the  prevalent 
Calvinistic       Congrega 
tionalism.       It     placed 
hope    of    salvation    not 
in    the    dogma    of    the 
atonement,  but  in  con 
duct  ;  it  asserted,  in  op 
position  to  the  doctrine 
of  total  depravity,  that 
there  was  essential  good 
in  every  man,  with  pos 
sibilities  of  infinite  de 
velopment.     It  taught, 
not  that  man's  fate  was 
predestined,  but  that  he 
was    himself    master  of 
his    fate.      At    first    it 
was  as  sternly  logical  as 
Calvinism     itself ;     but 
the  Emersonian  "Tran- 
scendentalists "    of    the 
thirties  placed  emphasis 

Upon    its    Cheering    affir- 
mationS   rather   than   its 

denials,  and  gave  the 
movement  a  joyous  moral  enthusiasm.  It  was  both  a  cause 
and  a  result  of  the  progress  in  democracy.  The  old  Congre 
gationalism  had  been  the  fast  ally  of  aristocratic  Federalism  : 
Unitarianism  was  an  expression  of  a  democratic  age.  Differ 


RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON.  The  statue  by  Daniel 
Chester  French  at  the  public  library  of  Con 
cord,  Emerson's  home. 


446  THE  AMERICA  OF  1830 

as  they  might  in  characteristics,  Emerson  and  Andrew  Jack 
son  belonged  fundamentally  to  the  same  era,  —  the  serene 
prophet  of  the  spiritual  worth  and  dignity  of  each  soul,  and 
the  passionate  apostle  of  political  and  social  equality. 

Unitarianism  never  counted  large  in  numbers  ;  but  nearly 
all  the  famous  names  catalogued  above  were  connected  with 
it,  and  it  early  captured  Harvard.  Gradually,  it  permeated 
and  transformed  Calvinistic  Congregationalism.  A  less 
rigidly  intellectual  revolt  against  Calvinism,  —  more  emo 
tional  than  Unitarianism  and  equally  optimistic  and  demo 
cratic,  —  gave  rise  to  Universalism  and  to  a  growth  of  the 
Methodist  churches  and  of  various  new  sects.  Said  Emerson 
of  this  "  theological  thaw,"  "  'Tis  a  whole  population  of 
ladies  and  gentlemen  out  in  search  of  a  religion." 

The    intellectual    and  religious  ferment    of    the    thirties 
transformed  society.     Exact  "and  profound  scholarship  was 
still  lacking ;    but   an   aspiration  for  knowledge, 
living  a  hunger  for  culture,    a    splendid  idealism,    be- 

came  characteristics  of  American  life,  —  until 
"fattened  out,"  for  a  time  after  1875,  by  a 
gross  material  prosperity.  During  that  long  era,  to  wel 
come  "high  thinking"  at  the  price  of  "plain  living"  was 
instinctive  in  an  almost  unbelievably  large  portion  of  the 
people.  Ambitious  boys,  barefoot  and  in  threadworn  coats, 
thronged  the  little  colleges,  not  for  four  years  of  a  good  time, 
but  with  genuine  passion  to  break  into  the  fairy  realm  of 
knowledge  ;x  and  their  hard-earned  dimes  that  did  not  have 

1  In  1846  a  boy  of  eighteen  started  for  Knox  College,  at  Galesburg,  Illinois. 
By  working  as  a  farm  hand  (he  harvested  two  weeks  for  a  Virgil  and  a  Latin  Dic 
tionary),  and  by  teaching  school  for  a  few  months  (and  "boarding  round")  at  eight 
dollars  a  month,  he  had  saved  up  ten  dollars.  He  walked  first  to  Chicago,  the 
nearest  town,  for  supplies;  but  the  unaccustomed  temptation  of  the  display  in 
a  bookstore  window  lured  him  within,  and  most  of  his  capital  went  for  a  few  books, 
which  would  seem  old-fashioned,  indeed,  to  the  boys  of  to-day.  The  remaining 
cash  bought  only  a  pair  of  shoes  and  an  Indian-blanket  coat  (with  great  stripes 
about  the  bottom).  To  save  the  precious  shoes,  he  then  walked  the  two  hundred 
miles  from  his  home  to  Galesburg  barefoot.  His  first  day  there,  he  built  a  fence 
for  the  President's  cow  pasture,  to  earn  money  for  textbooks,  and  found  a  place 
to  work  for  his  board  through  the  college  year.  This  man  became  one  of  the 
potable  builders  of  a  Western  commonwealth,  and  his  story  is  a  typical  one. 


THE  INTELLECTUAL  AWAKENING  447 

to  go  for  plain  food  went  for  books.  English  authors  of  a 
new  sort  of  genius  —  Carlyle,  Browning,  William  Morris  — 
as  well  as  English  scientists  with  new  teachings,  like  Dar 
win  and  Huxley,  reached  appreciative  audiences  in  America 
sooner  than  at  home.  It  is  notorious  that  Carlyle's  long- 
delayed  income  from  his  books  came  first  from  reprints  in 
America,  managed  by  Emerson ;  and  many  another  English 
book,  afterward  recognized  as  epoch-making,  found  its  way 
into  far  Western  villages,  and  into  the  hands  of  eager  young 
men  and  women  there  who  had  never  worn  evening  dress 
or  eaten  a  course  dinner,  long  before  it  penetrated  to  even 
the  "reading  set"  at  Oxford  University.  The  North  Ameri 
can  Review  and,  a  little  later,  the  Atlantic  Monthly  could  be 
seen  in  isolated  farmhouses.  Before  1862,  William  Dean 
Howells,  then  a  young  newspaper  writer  in  a  raw  Western 
town,  counted  Browning  and  Thackeray  among  his  favorite 
authors ;  but  Walter  Besant  mentions  in  his  Autobiography 
that  these  authors  were  not  then  known  to  his  set  at 
Cambridge  University. 

A  caricature  picturing  a  gaunt  New  England  housewife  on 
hands  and  knees  to  scrub,  but  pushing  before  her  a  stand 
holding  an  open  copy  of  Emerson  to  which  her  eyes  were 
glued,  might  have  been  applied,  with  no  more  exaggeration, 
to  the  strenuous  struggle  for  culture  in  many  a  modest 
home  in  Kansas  or  Minnesota.  The  village  sewing  society 
eschewed  gossip  to  listen  to  one  of  their  number  reading 
aloud  while  the  others  plied  the  needle.  Each  village  had 
its  lyceum,  for  the  winter  evenings,  with  literary  programs,— 
readings,  declamations,  and  debates  —  crude  and  quaint 
enough,  sometimes,  but  better  than  "refined  vaudeville." 
Such  villages,  too,  aspired  to  frequent  courses  of  lectures, 
-  with  such  eastern  celebrities  as  Holmes  and  Everett  on 
the  program;  and  often  the  proceeds  of  the  lectures  were 
used  to  start  a  village  library.1  Twice,  on  such  lecture 

1  In  1859  Edward  Everett  lectured  at  St.  Cloud,  a  new,  straggling  village  of 
a  hundred  houses,  in  Minnesota.  The  one-room  schoolhouse  in  which  he  spoke 
was  promptly  named  the  Everett  School;  and  receipts  from  the  "entertainment" 
were  appropriated  for  a  library  which  was  kept  for  years  in  a  private  home.  After 
the  Civil  War,  a  Woman's  Aid  Society,  which  had  been  earning  money  to  send 


448  THE  AMERICA  OF   1830 

tours,  Emerson  penetrated  beyond  the  Mississippi,  greeted 
in  barn-like  "halls"  by  hard-handed  men  and  women, 
seated  on  wooden  benches,  with  eager  faces  agleam  with 
keen  intellectual  delight. 

The  intellectual  and  moral  ferment  of  the  time  overflowed 
in  manifold  attempts  at  Utopias  set  off  from  ordinary  society. 
Attempted  New  England  Transcendentalists  tried  a  coopera- 
utopias  tive  society  at  Brook  Farm  (1841),  with  which 
Emerson  and  Hawthorne  were  connected,  and  which  the 
latter's  Blithedale  Romance  afterward  satirized.  Robert 
Owen,  who  had  already  attempted  a  model  industrial  town  in 
Scotland,  founded  New  Harmony  in  Indiana,  where  labor 
and  property  were  to  be  in  common.  Scores  of  like  com 
munities  were  soon  established  in  different  parts  of  the 
West;  and  the  old  communistic  societies  of  the  "Shakers" 
spread  rapidly.  Said  Emerson,  with  genial  recognition  of 
the  humorous  side  of  the  upheaval,  "Not  a  man  you  meet 
but  has  a  draft  of  a  new  community  in  his  pocket." 

Peculiar  among  these  movements  was  Mormonism,  with  its 
institution  of  polygamy.  Mormonism  was  founded  at  Pal- 
Mormonism  myra'  New  York,  in  1829,  by  Joseph  Smith,  who 
claimed  to  be  a  prophet  and  to  have  discovered  the 
inspired  Book  of  Mormon.  Soon  the  "Latter-Day  Saints" 
removed  to  Ohio  ;  then  to  Missouri ;  and,  driven  thence  by 
popular  hatred,  to  Illinois,  where,  in  1841,  they  established  at 
Nauvoo  a  "Holy  City"  of  ten  thousand  people,  industrious 
and  prosperous,  ruled  by  Smith  after  the  fashion  of  an  ancient 
Hebrew  "Judge."  Three  years  later,  a  mob  from  surrounding 
towns  broke  up  the  settlement  and  murdered  Smith.  Then, 
under  the  youthful  Brigham  Young,  the  persecuted  Mormons 
sought  refuge  in  Utah,  vaguely  supposed  to  be  a  part  of 

"luxuries"  and  medicines  to  sick  soldiers,  continued  its  meetings  and  used  its 
money  to  enlarge  this  choice  collection  of  books.  There,  as  a  boy,  the  writer 
made  first  acquaintance  with  Carlyle,  Marcus  Aurelius,  standard  histories  of  that 
day,  such  as  Prescott's  Philip  II  and  Motley's  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic,  and 
the  novels  of  Scott,  George  Eliot,  and  Thackeray.  This  experience  was  typical. 
The  few  books,  purchased  by  real  book  lovers,  were  not  yet  buried  in  a  mass  of 
commonplace. 


INTELLECTUAL  AND  MORAL  FERMENT  449 

Mexico,  but  remote  from  any  organized  government  and 
sheltered  from  "  civilization  "  by  the  desert  and  the  Rockies. 
Here  their  industry  made  the  cactus  sands  to  bloom,  and 
they  remained  in  peace  until  invaded  by  the  rush  of  gold- 
seekers  to  California  after  '49. 

More  effective  than  these  attempts  at  new  Utopian  socie 
ties  were  a  multitude  of  movements  for  social  betterment 
within  the  existing  community.  Massachusetts  social 
founded  the  first  public  hospital  for  the  insane;  and  betterment 
Dorothy  Dix  spent  a  noble  life  in  spreading  such  institutions 
in  other  States.  Special  schools  for  the  deaf  and  the  blind 
were  instituted.  States  began  to  separate  juvenile  delin 
quents  from  hardened  criminals;  and  for  the  criminals 
themselves  more  rational  and  wholesome  prison  life  was 
attempted.  Temperance  societies  began  in  Boston  in 
1824 ;  and,  in  1846,  Maine  adopted  the  first  State- wide 
prohibition  law.  The  Abolition  movement  rose  and  spread, 
and  soon  the  agitation  against  slavery  became  the  chief 
manifestation  of  this  great  wave  of  moral  earnestness.  The 
thirties,  too,  saw  the  beginning  of  a  long  agitation  for 
Woman's  Rights,  including  coeducation,  equality  with  men 
in  inheriting  and  owning  property,  and  the  franchise.  The 
legal  position  of  woman  everywhere  in  America  was  still 
regulated  by  the  medieval  Common  law.  An  unmarried 
woman's  earnings  and  "property"  were  not  hers  (any  more 
than  a  slave's  were  his),  but  belonged  legally  to  her  father. 
A  married  woman's  property  (unless  protected  by  express 
legal  settlement)  was  her  husband's,  and,  in  many  degrading 
ways,  she  was  herself  his  chattel.  Statute  law  now  began 
faint  reform  of  some  of  these  evils. 

Mechanical  invention,  too,  began  to  revolutionize  in 
dustry  and  life.  From  the  inauguration  of  Washington  to 
the  War  of  1812,  patents  for  new  inventions  Mechanical 
averaged  less  than  eighty  a  year.  From  1812  to  invention 
1820,  they  rose  to  nearly  two  hundred  a  year,  and  in  1830 
the  number  was  544.  Twenty  years  later,  the  thousand 
mark  was  passed,  and  in  1860,  the  number  was  nearly  5000. 


450  THE  AMERICA  OF  1830 

These  inventions  saved  time  or  tended  to  make  life  more 
comfortable  or  more  attractive.  A  few  cases  only  can  be 
mentioned  from  the  bewildering  mass.  Axes,  scythes,  and 
other  edged  tools,  formerly  imported,  were  manufactured  at 
home.  The  McCormick  reaper  appeared  in  1831.  This 
invention,  with  its  improvements,  soon  multiplied  the 
farmer's  efficiency  in  the  harvest  field  by  twenty,  and,  with 
the  general  introduction  of  threshing  machines,  made  it 
possible  for  our  people  to  use  the  vast  grain  lands  of  the 
Northwest.  Planing  mills  created  a  new  industry  in  wood. 
Colt's  "revolver"  (1835)  replaced  the  one-shot  "pistol." 
Iron  stoves  began  to  rival  the  ancient  fireplace  for  cooking. 
Friction  matches  (invented  in  England  in  1827)  were  the 
first  improvement  on  prehistoric  methods  of  making  fire. 
Illuminating  gas  for  city  streets  improved  city  morals.  In 
1838  the  English  Great  Western,  with  screw  propeller  and  with 
coal  to  heat  its  boilers,  established  steam  navigation  across 
the  Atlantic,  —  though  the  bulk  of  ocean  freight  continued 
long  to  be  carried  in  American  sailing  ships.  The  same  year 
saw  the  invention  of  the  steam  hammer  and  the  successful 
application  of  anthracite  coal  to  smelting  iron.1  In  1839  a 
Frenchman,  Daguerre,  began  photography  with  his  "da 
guerreotypes,"  and  still  earlier  another  French  chemist  had 
found  how  to  can  foods.  In  1842  the  anesthetic  value  of 
ether,  an  incomparable  boon  to  suffering  humanity,  was 
discovered  by  Dr.  Crawford  W.  Long  of  Georgia.  The 
magnetic  telegraph,  invented  in  1835,  was  made  effective  in 
1844.  Howe's  sewing  machine  was  patented  in  1846;  the 
next  year  saw  the  first  rotary  printing  press. 

Except  as  otherwise  indicated,  all  these  inventions  were 
by  Americans.  In  1841  America  had  its  full  revenge  for 
earlier  British  disdain,  when  a  member  of  the  English 
cabinet  declared  in  parliament,  "I  apprehend  that  a  majority 
of  the  really  new  inventions  [lately  introduced  into  England] 
have  originated  abroad,  especially  in  America." 


1  Pittsburg  was  already  the  center  of  iron  manufactures  for  the  West.  Now 
its  neighborhood  to  both  anthracite  and  iron  made  it  a  center  of  this  great  industry 
for  the  whole  country. 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  RAILWAY 


451 


The  railway 


The  Railway  deserves  a  fuller  account.  Tramways  (lines 
of  wooden  rails  for  cars  drawn  by  horses,  for  short  distances) 
came  into  use  in  some  American  cities  about  1807. 
As  early  as  1811,  John  Stevens  began  twenty  years 
of  fruitless  efforts  to  interest  capital  in  his  dream  of  a  steam 
railway.  In  1814,  in  England,  George  Stephenson  com 
pleted  a  locomotive,  which  found  employment  in  hauling 
coal  on  short  tracks ;  but  no  railway  of  consequence  for 
passenger  traffic  was  opened  there  until  about  1830.  After 


THE  "  DE  WITT  CLINTON,"  the  first  railroad  locomotive  that  ran  in  New  York.  It 
made  its  first  trip,  August  9, 1831,  from  Albany  to  Schenectady.  From  a  photo 
graph  of  a  "restoration." 

1825,  the  question  was  much  agitated  in  America;  and 
July  4,  1828,  the  aged  Charles  Carroll,  signer  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  drove  the  golden  spike  that 
marked  the  beginning  of  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio.  The 
same  year  witnessed  a  score  of  charters  to  projected  lines ; 
but  construction  was  slow,  from  lack  of  experience  and 
materials,  and  especially  from  lack  of  engineers  to  survey 
and  construct  roadbeds ;  and  it  was  still  thought  commonly 
that  about  the  only  advantage  for  railroads  over  canals  would 
lie  in  the  freedom  from  interruption  by  ice  in  winter. 
In  1830  less  than  thirty  miles  of  track  were  in  use,  —  and 


452  THE  AMERICA  OF  1830 

this  only  for  "coaches"  drawn  by  horses  ;  but  in  1840  nearly 
three  thousand  miles  were  in  operation,  and,  for  long  there 
after,  the  mileage  doubled  each  five  years.  The  early  rails 
were  of  wood,  protected  from  wear  by  a  covering  of 
wrought-iron  "straps,"  perhaps  half  an  inch  thick,  which 
had  the  awkward  habit  of  curling  up  at  a  loosened  end. 
The  "coaches"  imitated  the  shape  of  the  stagecoach;  but 
finally  a  form  more  adapted  to  the  new  uses  was  devised. 
The  rate  of  progress  on  the  first  roads  rose  to  fifteen  miles 
an  hour,  —  something  quite  beyond  previous  imagination. 
By  1850,  the  railroad  had  begun  to  outrun  settlement,  forging 
ahead  into  the  wilderness,  "to  sow  with  towns  the  prairies 
broad,"  and  to  create  the  demand  for  transportation  which 
was  to  feed  it. 

It  was  natural  to  treat  the  railway  like  any  other  improved 
road  or  public  highway,  so  far  as  conditions  would  permit. 
Some  States,  at  first,  permitted  any  one  to  run  cars  over  a  line 
by  paying  proper  tolls.  But,  in  the"  absence  of  scientific 
system  and  of  telegraphic  train-dispatching,  so  many  acci 
dents  occurred,  that  this  plan  was  given  up.  Then  roadbed 
and  train  fell  to  one  ownership.  It  remained  to  decide 
whether  that  owner  should  be  the  public  or  a  private  cor 
poration.  Several  States  tried  State  ownership,  as  with 
canals  (Massachusetts,  Pennsylvania,  Michigan,  Georgia) ; 
but  lines  ran  from  State  to  State  in  such  a  way  as  to  make 
this  practically  impossible.  No  one  in  that  day  suggested 
that  the  nation  should  own  and  operate  railroads ;  and  so 
these  tremendously  powerful  forces  were  abandoned  to 
private  corporations. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

THE   "REVOLUTION   OF   1828" 

THE  victory  of  Jackson  in  the  Nation  was  a  result  of 
democratic  victories  that  unknown  men  had  been  winning  in 
the   States.      It  was   possible  only  because  of  a  Extension 
recent  rapid  extension  of  manhood  suffrage.     At  of  manhood 
Washington's  election  manhood  suffrage  was  found  suffrage 
in  none  of  the  thirteen  States.     At  Jefferson's  election  it 
was  practiced  in  only  Kentucky  and  Vermont  out  of  the 
sixteen.     By  1824  it  was  established  in  ten  of  the  twenty- 
four  commonwealths,  and  five  others  had  removed  all  but 
nominal  restrictions  upon  it.1 

These  reforms  had  been  carried  against  vehement  protest 
by  the  elder  statesmen.     The  aged  John  Adams  and  the  stal 
wart  Webster  made  stubborn  resistance  in  Massa- 
chusetts.     In  New  York,  Chancellor  Kent,  a  great 
lawyer  and  a  noble  man,  pleaded  with  the  constitu-  of  the 
tional  convention  not  to  "carry  desolation  through 
all  the  fabric  erected  by  our  fathers,"  or  "put  forth  to  the 
world  a  constitution  such  as  will  merit  the  scorn  of  the  wise 
and  the  tears  of  the  patriot."     In  Virginia  (1830),  only  a 
slight  gain  was  made,  and  Marshall,  Madison,   and  Ran 
dolph,  ancient  foes,  joined  hands  to  shut  out  80,000  White 
citizens  from  the  vote. 

1  Between  1792  and  1821,  eleven  new  States  had  been  admitted.  Tennessee 
had  an  ineffective  restriction  on  the  franchise  (removed  in  a  new  constitution  in 
1833) ;  Ohio  at  first  required  payment  of  taxes  as  a  qualification  for  voting ;  and 
Mississippi  required  either  that  or  service  in  the  militia.  The  other  eight  new  states 
came  in  with  manhood  suffrage.  Four  of  the  older  States  also  had  followed  in  the 
footsteps  of  the  progressive  West:  Maryland  adopted  manhood  suffrage  in  1810; 
Connecticut,  in  1818;  in  1821,  Massachusetts  and  New  York  reduced  their  former 
qualifications  to  tax  payment  or  militia  service,  and  in  1826  New  York  removed 
even  this  restriction. 

453 


454 


THE  AMERICA  OF  1830 


Everywhere  but  in  the  West  leadership  in  the  old  party 
of  Jefferson  had  fallen  into  the  hands  of  aristocrats.  With 
striking  unanimity,  North  and  South,  such  leaders  now 
publicly  denounced  the  war  cry  of  Jackson  —  "Let  the 
people  rule"  -as  ominous  of  the  "tyranny  of  mere  num 
bers,"  or  queried  in  dismay,  with  that  pure  and  noble 
gentleman,  Judge  Gaston  of  South  Carolina,  "What  then  is 
to  become  of  our  system  of  checks  and  balances?"  In  the 


JEFFERSON'S  HOME,  MONTICELLO. 

Federal  presidency  itself,  Monroe  and  Adams  had  brought 
back  the  pomp  and  ceremonial  against  which  Jefferson 
had  contended. 

The  election  of  Jackson  then,  even  more  than  that  of 
Jefferson,  marks  a  true  "revolution"  in  American  society. 
"  jackso-  Again  a  new  generation  had  come  upon  the  stage 
niande-^  -  and  indeed  upon  a  new  stage.  The  victory  of 
Jackson  was  the  victory  of  the  new  West  over  the 
old  East;  and  in  the  East  itself  it  was  the  victory 
of  the  newly  awakened  labor  class.  Everywhere  it  was 


JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY 


455 


the  victory  of  a  new  radical  democracy,  untrained,  led  by 
"men  of  the  people,"  over  the  moderate  democracy  of 
Jefferson,  led  by  trained,  leisured,  cultured  "gentlemen." 
To  compare  the  exterior  of  Abraham  Lincoln  (frontispiece), 
with  the  portrait  of  Jefferson  on  page  408  is  to  glimpse  some 
of  the  contrast  between  Jeffersonian  and  Jacksonian  democ 
racy.  Jeffersonian  democracy  had  feared  government : 
Jacksonian  democracy  was  eager  to  use  it.  The  old  democ 
racy  had  taught  that  the  people  should  be  governed  as  little 
as  possible :  the  new  democracy  taught  that  the  people 
might  govern  as  much 
as  they  liked.  More,— 
drunk  with  its  victory, 
democracy  began  to  in 
sist  not  merely  that 
majorities  ought  to  be 
supreme,  as  the  best 
policy,  but  even  that 
majorities  were  always 
right:  "vox  populi,  vox 
Dei." 

The   wider   suffrage   after    1825   brought   other   political 
changes.     1.    The  franchise  was  used  more  directly.     In  an  in 
creasing   number    of   States,   the    governors    and  Resuits 
judges  were  chosen  by  the  people  instead  of  by  of  wider 
the  legislatures.     So,  too,  of  presidential  electors  :  f 
in  1800,  ten  States  of  the  sixteen  chose  electors  by  legislatures ; 
in  1828  only  two  of  the  twenty -four  did  so,  and  after  that 
the  only  State  to  continue  the  practice  was  South  Carolina. 

2.  The  presidency  gained  power.     It  was  no  longer  filled, 
even  in  theory,  by  a  select  coterie.     Jackson's  friends  liked 
to  call  their  leader  "the  chosen  Tribune  of  the  people." 
The  Nation  found  it  easier  to  express  its  will  in  choosing 
one  man  than  in  choosing  a  Congress  in  hundreds  of  local 
units,  often  largely  upon  local  issues. 

3.  The  two  matters  just  mentioned  combined  to  bring 
out  a  larger  vote.     The  election  of  1789  was  fiercely  contested 


THE  BIRTHPLACE  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 


456  JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY 

in  New  York,  but  only  one  vote  was  cast  for  every  27 
inhabitants.  In  1828  that  State  cast  a  vote  for  every  six 
inhabitants.  Pennsylvania  cast  47,000  votes  in  1824,  but 
150,000  in  1828.  In  Massachusetts  only  one  man  in  19 
went  to  the  polls  in  1824,  but  after  1828  the  proportion  was 
rarely  under  1  in  8. 

4.  Property   qualifications  for  office  disappeared  rapidly, 
and  test  oaths  were  abolished  so  that  Jews  and   Catholics 
could  hold  office. 

5.  The  union  of  State  and  Church  in   Connecticut  and 
Massachusetts  was  overthrown,  and  the  greater  democracy 
in  politics  in  New  England  brought  social  changes  there. 
After  the  extension  of  the  suffrage  in  Connecticut  in  1818, 
public   officers   ceased   to   wear   cockaded   hats,   powdered 
wigs,  or  knee-breeches  and  silk  stockings. 

Andrew  Jackson  dominated  America  for  twelve  years 
(1829—1841),  for  his  control  reached  over  into  the  administra- 
Andrew  tion  of  his  successor  and  political  heir,  Van  Buren. 
Jackson  jje  was  of  Scotch-Irish  descent,  and  his  boyhood 
had  been  passed  in  the  backwoods  of  North  Carolina,  in  bare 
poverty.  Picking  up  some  necessary  scraps  of  knowledge,  he 
removed  to  the  newer  frontier  of  Tennessee  to  practice  law. 
He  was  a  natural  leader ;  and  his  incisiveness  and  aggressive 
ness  forced  him  to  the  front.  In  1797  Tennessee  sent  him 
as  her  first  Representative  to  Congress,  —  for  which  life 
at  that  time  he  seems  to  have  been  little  fitted.  Gallatin 
noticed  him  only  for  his  uncouth  dress  and  manner,  —  un 
kempt  hair  tied  in  an  eel-skin  cue,  —  and  Jefferson  was  dis 
gusted  by  the  "passion"  that  "choked  his  utterance." 

Soon,  however,  Jackson  found  his  place  as  military  leader 
and  Indian  fighter ;  and  he  came  back  to  political  leadership 
as  a  more  imposing  figure,  —  the  natural  spokesman  of 
Western  democracy.  "Old  Hickory"  remained  spare  in 
person,  with  the  active  and  abstemious  living  of  the  frontier. 
His  hair  was  now  a  silvered  mane.  His  manner  was  marked 
by  a  stately  dignity  and,  toward  all  women,  by  true  court 
liness.  Beneath  this  exterior,  he  remained  as  pugnacious 


THE  SPOILS  SYSTEM 


457 


and  fearless  and  self-confident  as  ever,  apt  to  jump  to  con 
clusions  and  stubborn  in  clinging  to  them.  A  choice 
bit  of  contemporary  satire  makes  him  say,  "It  has  always 
bin  my  way,  when  I  git  a  notion,  to  stick  to  it  till  it  dies  a 
natural  death ;  and  the  more  folks  talk  agin  my  notions, 
the  more  I  stick  to  'em."  He  was  sure  of  his  own  good 
intentions,  and,  with  somewhat  less  reason,  of  his  good 
judgment.  He  trusted  his  friends  (not  always  wisely  chosen) 
as  himself,  and  he  was  moved  by  an  unconscious  vanity 


"CLAR  DE  KITCHEN,"  a  contemporary  cartoon,  now  in  the  Library  of  Congress, 
caricaturing  Jackson's  treatment  of  his  ("kitchen")  cabinet  when  they  differed 
from  him.  The  faces  are  portraits. 

that  made  it  easy  for  shrewd  men  to  play  upon  him ;  but, 
withal,  he  had  sound  democratic  instincts,  hating  monopoly 
and  distrusting  commercial  greed  and  all  appeals  from  it  for 
alliance  with  the  government,  and  believing  devotedly  in  the 
"sovereignty  of  the  people,"  a  sovereign  who  "could  do  no 
wrong."  As  President  he  felt  himself  to  be  the  embodiment 
of  the  Nation's  will ;  and  he  seized  a  masterful  control  of 
Congress  so  successfully  and  imposingly  that  all  Presidents 
since  have  felt  themselves  possessed  of  rightful  power  never 
claimed  by  Washington  or  Jefferson.  One  symbol  of  the 


458  JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY 

new  power  of  the  President  was  the  growth  of  the  veto. 
The  preceding  six  Presidents  together  had  vetoed  nine 
bills  —  all  on  constitutional  grounds  ;  Jackson  hailed  twelve 
vetoes  on  the  astounded  Congress  to  control  general  policy, 
besides  using  freely  the  "pocket  veto"  which  was  permitted 
by  the  Constitution  but  which  no  former  President  had  used. 

The  first  and  main  fault  of  the  new  democracy,  and  of  its 
chief,  was  the  degradation  of  the  civil  service.  Since  Jeffer- 
The  spoils  son's  election,  there  had  been  no  change  of  party, 
system  au^  until  1824,  no  factional  contest  within  the 
dominant  party.  Accordingly,  there  had  been  no  occasion 
for  sweeping  changes  among  office-holders.  In  1820  Senator 
Crawford  of  Georgia  had  secured  a  "four-year  tenure-of -office 
bill,"  providing  that  a  great  number  of  offices  should  there 
after  always  become  vacant  four  years  after  appointment. 
But  Adams,  with  high-minded  dignity,  refused  to  take 
advantage  of  this  legal  opportunity  to  punish  adversaries 
and  hire  supporters.  Instead,  he  reappointed  all  fit  officials, 
and  made  only  twelve  removals  during  his  term.  The  law 
remained,  however,  a  keen  weapon  for  less  scrupulous  men. 
Jackson,  indeed,  needed  no  new  weapon :  the  powers  of  the 
President  under  the  Constitution  were  enough.  His 
enemies  were,  to  his  mind,  the  Nation's  enemies ;  and  he 
was  controlled  by  friends  who  brazenly  proclaimed  the 
doctrine,  "To  the  victors  belong  the  spoils  of  the  enemy." 

Jackson  men  from  distant  States  hastened  to  the  Capital 
to  attend  the  inauguration  and  press  claims  to  appoint 
ments.  Never  had  Washington  seen  such  a  horde  of  hungry 
politicians,  and  more  than  one  historian  has  sharpened  his 
pen  to  picture  caustically  "the  scrambling,  punch-drinking 
mob  which  invaded  Washington  at  the  inauguration,  crowd 
ing  and  pushing  into  the  White  House,  tipping  over  tubs  of 
punch  and  buckets  of  ices,  standing  with  muddy,  hobnailed 
shoes  on  the  damask  furniture."  In  the  preceding  forty 
years  of  the  government,  there  had  been  less  than  two 
hundred  removals  from  office  for  all  causes.  In  his  first 
year,  Jackson  made  two  thousand.  But  this  was  far  too 
moderate  to  content  the  multitude.  The  policy  of  spoils 


NEW  POLITICAL  MACHINERY  459 

was  the  Nation's  blunder,  not  merely  the  President's ;  and 
the  Nation  was  to  be  shackled  by  it  for  more  than  a  gen 
eration.1  At  the  moment  it  resulted  in  widespread  in 
efficiency  and  in  many  scandalous  cases  of  corruption  — 
to  all  of  which  Jackson  held  himself  stubbornly  indifferent. 
His  successor  reaped  the  whirlwind.  In  1837  (Van  Buren's 
first  year)  the  collector  of  the  New  York  Customs  defaulted 
in  the  sum  of  a  million  dollars  and,  together,  64  of  the  67 
land  officers  stole  a  million  more. 

The  enlarged  vote  called  for  new  political  machinery.     Each 
party  created  a  hierarchy  of  permanent  committees  to  manage 
its  interests.     From  a  National  Committee  there  committee 
radiated  downward  the  many  State  Committees,   and  conven- 
From  each  of  these  branched  the  committees  for  * 
the  counties  and  Congressional  districts  of  the  State ;   and 
from  these,  the  committees  for  the  precincts  in  the  small 
est  voting  units. 

This  committee  system  was  soon  interwoven  with  a  con 
vention  system.  The  division  into  parties  had  made  it 
advisable  to  agree  upon  candidates  for  President  in  advance 
of  the  campaign,  —  something  never  contemplated,  as  we 
have  seen,  by  the  Constitution.  For  a  while  this  was 
accomplished  by  the  Congressional  caucus  (page  319).  But 
at  such  a  caucus  the  members  were  Congressmen  who  had 
been  chosen  two  years  before,  on  wholly  different  issues. 
Men  resented  it  that  such  uncommissioned  "representatives  " 
should  presume  to  speak  for  the  party  on  this  vital  matter, 
and  the  repute  of  "aristocratic  King  Caucus"  had  been 
dissipated  finally  in  the  campaign  of  1824.  The  same  causes 
which  discredited  the  Congressional  caucus  for  the  Nation 
had  also  discredited  legislative  caucuses  for  nominating 
State  officers ;  and  New  York  and  Pennsylvania  had  devised 
State  Conventions,  chosen  in  party  gatherings  in  the  various 
election  districts.  This  step  was  extended  to  the  Nation  at 
large  in  the  campaign  of  1832. 

1  The  "spoils  system"  came  into  force  in  some  States,  notably  in  New  York, 
sooner  than  in  the  Nation  at  large. 


460  JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY 

This  complex  machinery  called  for  an  immense  body  of 
workers,-  "more  people,"  said  a  competent  authority 
twenty  years  ago,  "than  all  the  other  political  machinery 
in  the  world."  It  was  natural,  therefore,  that  its  develop 
ment  should  have  gone  along  with  the  appearance  of  the 
spoils  system  to  pay  the  necessary  recruits. 

Quite  as  naturally  the  new  machinery  created  "bosses,"  to 
direct  it.  In  theory,  the  political  machinery  was  to  represent 
The  political  the  people's  will.  In  practice,  among  a  busy,  opti- 
boss  mistic  people,  it  was  admirably  fitted  to  fall  into  the 

hands  of  "professionals."  For  half  a  century,  while  the 
system  was  at  its  worst,  the  average  citizen  (unless  with  an 
"ax  to  grind")  largely  withdrew  from  all  political  duties, 
except  that  of  voting  for  the  names  put  before  him.  Office 
holders  of  various  grades  managed  the  committees  of  the 
party  in  power;  and  expectants  for  office  managed  those 
of  the  other  party.  Such  conditions  gave  a  low  tone  to 
politics.  A  campaign,  to  the  most  active  participants,  was 
dangerously  like  a  struggle  for  mere  personal  preferment. 
"Ward  heelers"  and  the  lowest  grade  of  active  workers, 
taking  orders  from  a  city  boss,  managed  ward  and  precinct 
primaries.  The  professionals  were  often  the  only  voters  to 
appear  ;  and  if  other  citizens  came,  they  found  the  chairman, 
judges,  and  printed  tickets  all  arranged  for  them  by  the 
"machine."  The  managers  were  usually  unscrupulous 
players  of  the  game,  and,  at  a  pinch,  did  not  hesitate  to 
"pack"  a  meeting  in  order  to  secure  the  election  of  their 
delegates.  Arrived  at  State  or  county  convention,  such 
delegates,  with  disciplined  obedience,  put  through  the 
"slate"  drawn  up  in  advance  by  the  bigger  bosses,  —  who 
commonly  had  arranged  all  details  with  a  nicety  and  pre 
cision  found  until  recently  in  few  lines  of  business. 

The  big  boss  was  not  always  an  officeholder.  His  profit 
often  came  in  indirect  ways  and  sometimes  in  corrupt 
ways.  Corporations  wishing  favors  or  needing  protection 
against  unfair  treatment  were  willing  to  pay  liberally  the 
man  who  could  secure  their  will  for  them.  Often  the  bosses 
of  opposing  parties  in  a  State  have  had  a  perfect  under- 


"BOSSES"  AND  PATRONAGE  461 

standing  with  each  other,  working  together  behind  the 
scenes  and  dividing  the  plunder.  Corruption  and  special 
privilege  have  always  been  strictly  "non-partisan." 

This  "boss"  system  gave  new  importance  to  the  Presi 
dent's  "patronage."     It  soon  became  the  rule  for  him  to 
nominate   postmasters  and   other  Federal   office-  And  the 
holders    only    on    the    recommendation    of    the  President's 
congressman  of   the    district,   if  he  were   of  the  pat 
President's  party,  or  of  the  "boss"  who  expected  to  become 
or  to  make  a  congressman.     The  congressman  uses  this  con 
trol  over  Federal  patronage  to  build  up  a  personal  machine, 
so  as  to  insure  support  for  his  reelection.     And  the  practice 
gives  a  powerful  weapon  to  a  strong  President,  who  is  often 
able  to  coerce  reluctant  congressmen  into  being  "good"  by 
hesitating  in  approving  their  recommendations  for  office. 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

"THE  REIGN"   OF  ANDREW   JACKSON,    1829-1841 

JACKSON  had  two  thirds  of  the  electoral  votes,  —  every  one 
south  of  the  Potomac  and  west  of  the  Appalachians,  together 
The  political  with  those  of  Pennsylvania  and  New  York.1  The 
situation  question  for  his  opponents  was  whether  the  alliance 
of  West  and  South  could  be  broken.  Those  two  sections 
were  still  united  against  the  capitalistic  East  by  their  bitter 
ness  toward  the  Bank  and  the  Supreme  Court ;  but  neither 
Bank  nor  Court  at  this  time  was  in  "practical  politics." 
The  pressing  problems  concerned  protection,  nullification, 
and  the  public  lands. 

The  North  Atlantic  section  insisted  on  a  continuance  of 
high  protection,  and  (under  the  old  apportionment  of  1820) 
it  still  had  a  powerful  vote  in  Congress.  But  in  the  South, 
college  boys  formed  associations  to  wear  homespun,  as  a 
protest  against  the  Northern  manufactures ;  and  during 
1828-1829  every  legislature  from  Virginia  to  Mississippi 
had  declared  for  secession  or  nullification  if  the  tariff  policy 
were  not  radically  changed.  The  West,  not  very  insistent 
either  way  on  the  tariff,2  was  devoted  to  the  Union,  which 
the  South  threatened ;  but,  in  opposition  to  the  East,  it 
was  even  more  devoted  to  securing  a  freer  public  land 
policy,  to  attract  new  settlers  and  to  protect  old  settlers 
against  tribute  to  Eastern  speculators.  This  land  reform 
was  championed  in  Congress  especially  by  Thomas 
Caihoun,  H.  Benton,  Senator  from  Missouri  (page  407) ,  and 
Webster,  ^he  devoted  follower  of  Jackson. 

CMftv 

The  other  great  leaders  of  the  time  were  the  trio 
Caihoun,  Webster,  and  Clay,  who  had  filled  the  public  eye 
since  1816. 

1  These  two  manufacturing  States  the  labor  vote  carried  for  Jackson. 

2  The  tariff  favored  wool  and  some  other  raw  products  of  the  West. 

462 


"POLITICS"   AND  LEADERS 


463 


Calhoun,  of  strict  Calvinistic  training,  keen  in  logic, 
austere  in  morals,  was  no  longer  the  ardent  young  enthusiast 
for  nationality  that  he  had  been  just  before  and  after  the 
War  of  1812.  He  had  reversed  his  stand  on  the  tariff,  to 
go  with  his  section.  He  was  the  chief  spokesman  of  the 
planters,  and  the  most  powerful  advocate  of  the  right  of 


PRESIDENTIAL  ELECTION  OF  1828 


nullification.  He  still  loved  the  Union,  but  he  believed 
it  could  be  preserved  only  by  making  it  elastic  enough  so 
that  the  States  might  nullify  Federal  laws. 

Webster  was  a  majestic  intellect  and  a  master  in  oratory. 
He,  too,  had  reversed  his  stand  both  on  the  tariff  and  the 
Bank,  to  go  with  his  section.  He  was  the  leading  champion 


464  JACKSON'S  ADMINISTRATION,   1829-1837 

in  Congress  of  the  manufacturing  capitalists ;  and,  from  an 
advocate  of  States  Rights  in  the  War  of  1812,  he  had 
become  the  great  defender  of  the  Union. 

Clay,  impetuous,  versatile,  winning,  was  the  only  one  of 
the  three  who  still  held  his  old  positions  on  leading  questions. 
Until  1820  he  had  been  absolutely  supreme  in  the  West. 
After  that  time  he  had  lost  influence  because  of  his  support 
of  the  Bank;  and  his  alliance  with  Adams  in  1824  had 
still  further  undermined  his  popularity.  However,  he  re 
mained  the  only  leader  who  could  at  all  withstand  Jackson 
in  his  own  section ;  and  not  even  Jackson  won  such  devoted 
personal  enthusiasm. 

The  National  Bank,  like  its  predecessor  of  1791,  was  a  huge 
monopoly  —  one  of  the  two  or  three  greatest  money  monopo- 
jackson  ^es  m  ^ne  world,  at  that  time.  It  had  special  privi- 
and  the  leges  not  open  to  other  individuals  or  corporations. 
It  had  vast  power,  too,  over  State  Banks  and  over 
the  business  of  the  country  :  at  a  word  it  could  contract  the 
currency  in  circulation  by  a  third.  The  Bank  had  used 
its  tremendous  power  for  the  advantage  of  the  country  in 
ways  that  Jackson  could  not  appreciate ;  but  at  any  time 
it  might  use  its  power  in  politics,  —  and  Jackson  felt  this 
danger  vividly. 

The  Bank's  charter  was  not  to  expire  until  1836,  and 
Jackson's  term  ended  in  1833 ;  but  in  his  first  message  to 
Congress  (December,  1829)  he  called  attention  to  the  fact 
that  within  a  few  years  the  Bank  must  ask  for  a  new  charter, 
and  asserted  that  "both  the  constitutionality  and  the 
expediency"  of  the  institution  were  "questioned  by  a  large 
part  of  our  fellow  citizens."  Clay  seized  the  chance  to 
array  the  Bank  against  Jackson,  and  persuaded  Biddle  (the 
Bank's  president)  to  ask  Congress  at  once  for  a  new  charter. 
The  bill  passed,  and  Jackson  vetoed  it  (July,  1831),  de 
claring  the  Bank's  control  of  the  country's  money  a  menace 
to  business  and  to  democratic  government.  Again,  too, 
despite  the  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court  in  1819  (page 
415),  he  called  the  Bank  charter  unconstitutional. 


NULLIFICATION  465 

Jackson's  foes  were  jubilant.  Webster  and  Adams  both 
declared  that  the  "old  Indian  fighter"  was  in  his  dotage ;  and 
Clay  and  Biddle  printed  and  circulated  30,000  ^ndthe 
copies  of  the  veto  as  a  campaign  document  to  de-  campaign 
feat  his  reelection.  It  proved  an  admirable  cam-  of  183: 
paign  document — for  Jackson.  In  the  election  of  1832  the 
foremost  question  was  Jackson  or  the  Bank.  The  President 
was  a  novice  in  politics,  but  he  had  outplayed  the  politicians 
and  selected  the  one  issue  that  could  keep  his  old  following 
united.  The  West  and  Southwest  hated  the  Bank  and  loved 
Jackson  ;  the  old  South  at  least  hated  the  Bank ;  and  once 
more  the  workingmen  of  the  Eastern  cities  declared  vehe 
mently  against  all  monopolies.  The  Bank  went  into  politics 
with  all  its  resources,  open  and  secret.  In  particular  it  made 
loans  on  easy  terms  to  fifty  members  of  Congress  ;  it  secured 
the  support  of  the  leading  papers ;  and  it  paid  lavish  sums 
to  political  writers  all  over  the  country  to  attack  Jackson. 

Jackson  was  reflected  by  219  electoral  votes,  to  49  for 
Clay,  and  he  received  a  larger  part  of  the  popular  vote  than 
any  President  had  had  since  Washington.     For  the  Jackson's 
first  time,  a  President  had  appealed  to  the  Nation  reelection \ 
over  the  head  of  Congress;  and  the  Nation  sustained  him.    In 
this  campaign  of  1832  the  National  Republicans  (page  419), 
complaining  of  Jackson's  attempts  to  dominate  Congress, 
took  the  name  Whig  —  which  in  England  had  long  indicated 
opposition  to  royal  control  over  parliament. 

Meantime  the  question  of  protection  or  nullification  was 
pressing  to  the  front.     In  the  summer  of  1828,  while  the 
South  was  seething  with  talk  of  secession,  Calhoun  Calhoun'S 
had  brought  forward  what  he  thought  a  milder  "Exposi- 
remedy  for  the  injustice  of  the  tariff.     This  was 
his  theory  of  nullification,  presented  in  his  famous  Expo 
sition. 

That  paper  argued  (1)  that  the  tariff  was  ruinous  to  the 
South;  (2)  that  "protection"  was  unconstitutional;  (3) 
that,  in  the  case  of  an  Act  so  injurious  and  unconstitutional, 
any  State  had  a  constitutional  right  peacefully  to  nullify  the 


466  JACKSON'S  ADMINISTRATION,   1829-1837 

law  within  her  borders,   until   Congress  should  appeal  to 
the  States  and  be  sustained  by  three  fourths  of  them  — 
the    number    necessary    to    amend    the    Constitution    and 
therefore  competent   to  say  what  was  and   was  not   con 
stitutional. 

Jackson's  election  in  1829  relieved  this  tension  for  a 
time.  His  first  inaugural  declared  his  wish  to  show  "a 
proper  respect  for  the  sovereign  members  of  our  Union"; 
and  he  was  supposed  to  dislike  the  existing  tariff.  Under 
these  conditions,  the  South  hoped  that  relief  might  come 
without  its  taking  extreme  measures.  During  1828-1829, 
Southern  leaders  pressed  upon  Jackson  unceasingly  the 
need  of  securing  new  tariff  legislation.  Then,  unexpectedly, 
the  question  of  nullification  was  argued  in  "the  great  debate" 
on  the  floor  of  the  Senate  (January  19-29,  1830). 

Senator  Foote  of  Connecticut  voiced  the  Eastern  jealousy 
of  Western  growth  by  a  resolution  to  stop  the  sale  of  public 
The  Foote  lands.  The  Westerners  resented  this  attack  on 
Resolution  their  development  vigorously.  Benton  gladly 
seized  the  chance  once  more  to  set  forth  his  plans  for  preemp 
tion  laws  and  other  schemes  to  make  easier  the  way  for  the 
pioneer.  But  soon  the  debate  ranged  far  from  the  original 
matter.  Senator  Hayne  of  South  Carolina  denounced 
And  the  warmly  the  East's  selfishness,  pledged  to  the  West 
Hayne-  the  continued  support  of  the  South,  and  at  the 
Webster  same  time  sought  to  draw  the  West  to  the  doctrine 
of  Calhoun's  Exposition.  Webster  replied  to 
Hayne's  argument  for  nullification  in  two  magnificent 
orations,  stripping  bare  the  practical  absurdity  of  the 
doctrine,  and  portraying  in  vivid  colors  the  glory  of  Amer 
ican  nationalism.  Webster  argued  that  the  Constitution 
made  us  a  Nation.  To  strengthen  this  position,  he  main 
tained  that  as  one  nation  "we  the  people  of  the  United 
States  "  had  made  the  Constitution.  Here  facts  were  against 
him;  but  this  historical  part  of  his  plea  was  really  im 
material.  The  vital  thing  was  not  the  theory  of  union 
held  by  a  departed  generation,  but  the  will  and  needs  of  the 
throbbing  present.  And  when  he  argued  that  the  United 


NULLIFICATION  467 

States  was  now  one  Nation,  and  must  so  continue,  he  gave 
deathless  form  to  a  truth  which,  inarticulate  before,  had 
yet  been  growing  in  the  consciousness  of  the  progressive 
North  and  West.  Says  Professor  MacDonald  (Jacksonian 
Democracy,  111)  :  "Hayne  argued  for  a  theory,  which, 
however  once  widely  held,  had  been  outgrown,  and  which 
could  not  under  any  circumstances  be  made  to  work. 
Webster  argued  for  a  theory,  which,  though  unhistorical  in 
the  form  in  which  he  presented  it,  nevertheless  gave  the 
Federal  government  ground  on  which  to  stand.  The  one 
.  .  .  looked  to  the  past,  the  other  to  the  present  and 
future.  Both  were  statesmen ;  both  loved  their  coun 
try  :  but  Hayne  would  call  a  halt,  while  Webster  would 
march  on." 

The  Southern  leaders  now  arranged  a  Jefferson  Day 
banquet  at  Washington  (April  13,  1830),  at  which  the  toasts 
were  saturated  with  State  sovereignty.  Jackson,  , 

the  guest  of  honor,  startled  the  gathering  by  pro-  toast, "  Our 
posing  the  toast-  "Our  Federal  Union:  it  must 
be  preserved."  And  soon  he  took  advantage  of 
several  other  opportunities  to  declare  that  he  would  meet 
nullification  with  force.  Jackson,  however,  did  now  recom 
mend  revision  and  reduction  of  the  tariff ;  but  he  failed  to 
get  what  he  wanted.  Clay  thought  he  could  defy  both 
Jackson  and  Calhoun ;  and  the  new  "tariff  of  1832"  re 
moved  only  the  absurd  atrocities  of  1828,  returning  to 
about  the  basis  of  1824.  This  merely  strengthened  the 
principle  of  protection,  and  gave  no  relief  to  the  South. 

The  South  Carolina  Congressmen  now  called  upon  their 
people  to  decide  "whether  the  rights  and  liberties  which  you 
received  as  a  precious  inheritance  from  an  illustrious  an 
cestry  shall  be  surrendered  tamely  ...  or  transmitted 
undiminished  to  your  posterity."  During  the  National 
campaign  for  Jackson's  reelection,  a  strenuous  State  cam 
paign  in  South  Carolina  elected  a  legislature  which  by 
large  majorities  called  a  State  convention.  Jackson,  mean 
while,  strengthened  the  Federal  garrison  at  Fort  Moultrie 
in  Charleston  harbor. 


468  JACKSON'S  ADMINISTRATION,  1829-1837 

After  five  days  of  deliberation,  the  convention  (November 
19),  by  a  vote  of  136  to  26,  adopted  an  Ordinance  of 
South  Nullification,  declaring  the  tariff  laws  void  within 

Carolina's  South  Carolina,  and  threatening  war  if  the 
Nullification  Federal  government  should  attempt  to  enforce 
them.  December  10,  1832,  Jackson  issued  an 
admirable  proclamation  to  the  people  of  South  Carolina, 
warning  them  of  the  peril  into  which  they  were  running, 
and  affirming  his  determination  to  enforce  the  laws  —  by 
the  bayonet  if  necessary.  But  to  Congress,  a  few  days 
before,  he  had  once  more  recommended  further  revision  of 
the  tariff.  The  legislature  of  Virginia,  at  the  suggestion  of 
members  of  the  Cabinet,  urged  compromise.  Clay  felt  the 
The  com-  whole  protective  system  endangered,  and  he  joined 
promise  on  hands  with  Calhoun  to  draw  a  tariff  bill  acceptable 
to  South  Carolina,  —  providing  for  a  reduction 
of  the  duties  in  the  tariff  of  1832,  to  be  made  gradually, 
so  that  by  1842  no  rate  should  exceed  20  per  cent.  This 
was  a  return  to  something  lower  than  the  practice  in  1816. 
On  March  1,  1833,  Congress  passed  both  this  compromise 
tariff  and  a  Force  Bill  giving  the  President  forces  to  bring 
rebellious  South  Carolina  to  obedience;  and  the  President 
took  what  satisfaction  he  could  get  by  signing  the  Force 
South  Bill  a  few  minutes  sooner  than  the  Tariff  Bill. 

Carolina        March   11,  the  South  Carolina  convention  reas 
sembled  and  rescinded  the  nullification  ordinance. 
Both  sides  claimed  victory.     South  Carolina  certainly  had 
not  yielded  until  she  got  all  she  had  asked. 

Whatever  victory  the  President  might  possibly  have 
boasted  in  South  Carolina  he  weakened  by  permitting  Georgia 
to  nullify  a  treaty  of  the  United  States  and  a  de- 
and  nuiiifi-  cision  of  the  Supreme  Court.  Georgia  had  enacted 
*aws  regarding  certain  lands  which  United  States 
treaties  declared  to  be  Indian  lands.  A  missionary 
to  the  Indians  disregarded  these  pretended  laws ;  and  a 
Georgia  court  sentenced  him  to  imprisonment  for  four  years 
at  hard  labor.  In  March,  1832,  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
United  States  declared  the  Georgia  statute  void  and  ordered 


STRUGGLE  WITH  THE  BANK  469 

the  release  of  the  prisoner.  "Well,"  exclaimed  Jackson, 
"John  Marshall  has  made  his  decision.  Now  let  him  en 
force  it."  The  missionary  remained  in  prison. 

Jackson's  conduct  in  the  two  cases  is  partly  explained 
by  the  fact  that  in  one  case  he  hated  Indians,  while  in  the 
other  case  he  hated  Calhoun.1  Moreover,  Georgia's  success 
humiliated  only  John  Marshall,  whom  Jackson  disliked : 
South  Carolina  would  have  humiliated  the  authority  of  the 
President  of  the  United  States,  —  who  happened  just  then 
to  be  Andrew  Jackson. 

Jackson  took  his  reelection  in  1832  as  a  verdict  from  the 
people  against  the  Bank.  Its  charter  had  three  years  still 
to  run ;  but  in  1833  the  President  insisted  that  The  Bank 
the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  should  thereafter  asain 
deposit  government  funds,  as  they  came  in,  with  certain 
"pet"  State  banks  instead  of  with  the  National  Bank. 
Two  secretaries  had  to  be  removed  before  he  found  one 
willing  to  take  this  step ;  and  the  Senate,  still  controlled 
by  the  hold-over  Whigs,  passed  a  formal  censure  of  the 
President  —  which  his  followers  some  months  later  managed 
to  have  expunged. 

The  "dying  monster,"  as  Jackson  men  called  the  Bank, 
fought  savagely.     Indeed  it  did  not  believe  it  was  dying. 
Biddle  was  confident  he  could  force  a  new  charter  The  Bank 
through  Congress  over  Jackson's  veto.     August  1,  creates  a 
1833,  he  ordered  the  twenty-six  branch  banks  to     pam 
call  in  loans  and  reduce  their  bank-note  circulation,  so  as  to 
make  "hard  times,"  claiming  of  course  that  such  contraction 
was  necessary  because  of  the  loss  of  the  government  deposits. 
In  the  midst  of  a  prosperous  year,  a  short,  sharp  panic  fol- 

1  Jackson  had  discovered  that,  years  before,  Calhoun  had  tried  to  persuade 
Monroe's  Cabinet  to  have  him  (Jackson)  censured  for  exceeding  his  military 
authority.  Moreover,  a  frontiersman  like  Jackson  was  certain  to  sympathize  with 
Georgia's  attempts  to  rid  her  soil  of  the  Indians.  Jackson  urged  Congress  re 
peatedly  to  remove  all  Indian  tribes  to  the  "Indian  Territory"  beyond  the  Missis 
sippi.  This  policy  was  finally  adopted  in  his  second  administration,  giving  rise 
to  the  brief  "  Black  Hawk  War"  in  the  Northwest,  and  to  a  long-drawn-out  Seminole 
War  in  the  Everglades  of  Florida,  No  act,  however,  did  more  to  confirm  Jackson's 
popularity  in  the  land-hungry  and  somewhat  ruthless  West. 


470  JACKSON'S  ADMINISTRATION,   1829-1837 

lowed,  manufactured  heartlessly  by  the  money  power.  The 
harvest  was  abundant  ;  but  the  lack  of  the  usual  credit  was 
felt  cruelly  in  the  South  and  West  where  large  amounts  of 
money  were  always  needed  at  that  time  of  year  to  "move" 
cotton  and  grain  to  Eastern  markets.  Interest  rose  from 
six  and  eight  per  cent  to  fifteen  and  even  to  twenty-four 
per  cent;  and  farms  and  crops  went  for  a  song  under  the 
auctioneer's  hammer.  Delegations  of  business  men  rushed 
to  Washington  to  urge  Jackson  to  surrender. 

Jackson,  however,  could  not  be  moved  to  subordinate  the 
nation's  will  to  the  power  of  a  monied  corporation  ;  and 
soon  both  Congress  and  public  opinion  deserted  the  Bank. 
In  1834  Biddle  gave  up  the  struggle.  The  Bank  applied  to 
Pennsylvania  for  a  charter  as  a  State  Bank,  and  meantime 
returned  to  its  old  policy  in  loans  and  circulation.  Business 
became  normal  at  once. 

This  grisly  matter  might  at  least  have  warned  the  nation 

that  its  credit  was  overinflated.     The  warning  was  ignored  ; 

and,  three  years  later,  natural  causes  brought  on 

The  coming  '  J  .    .     ' 

of  a  real        a  real  financial  crisis  like  that  01  1819. 


inP1837  SillCe  the  War  °f   1812'  State  banks  had  doubled 

in  numbers  and  in  capital  and  bulk  of  loans  with 
out  enlarging  the  total  of  gold  and  silver  on  hand.  Many  of 
them,  especially  in  the  South  and  West,  were  "wild-cat" 
banks,  weak  and  recklessly  managed.  No  State  had  yet 
learned  how  to  guard  its  citizens  against  such  abuses.  Other 
lines  of  business  were  equally  reckless.  The  people,  especially 
in  the  South  and  West,  bought  their  daily  supplies  "on 
credit"  from  the  store;  the  storekeepers  had  bought  the 
goods  on  long  time  from  Eastern  wholesalers  ;  and  these  in 
turn  had  bought  on  credit  from  the  factory  or  the  foreign 
merchant.  All  this  was  perhaps  necessary  ;  but  it  encour 
aged  extravagance.  Less  excusable  was  the  universal  rage 
to  invest  in  land  and  to  speculate  in  stocks  —  on  credit, 
loaned  largely  by  the  unreliable  State  banks.  And  after 
1834  the  "pet"  banks,  in  which  the  government  deposited 
funds,  felt  able  to  loan  more  freely  than  ever  before. 


THE  PANIC  OF  1837  471 

The  orgy  of  building  roads  and  canals,  too,  was  in  full 
swing.     The  West  had  failed  to  get  much  in  the  way  of 
internal  improvements  from  the  Federal  govern-  Creditand 
ment ;    but,  confident  in  its  future,  it  was  itself  overmvest- 
pushing  canals  and  railroads  into  the  wilderness.  ' 
Often  this  was  done  wastef ully ;  and  in  any  case  much  money 
was  "sunk"  where  it  could  pay  no  interest  for  many  years. 
Illinois,  with  half  a  million  people  and  a  quarter  of  million 
of  do.llars  for  its  yearly  revenue,  bonded  itself  for  roads 
and  canals  to  the  amount  of  $14,000,000.     In  1820  State 
debts  all  together  were  under  $13,000,000:   in   1840  they 
were  $200,000,000,  mainly  owed  to  European  capitalists,  who 
drew  $12,000,000  interest  yearly  from  America. 

Another  government  measure  scattered  more  widely  the 
infection  of  overinvestment.  In  1835  the  national  debt 
was  paid,  and  a  surplus  was  piling  up  in  the  Treasury  at  the 
rate  of  $35,000,000  a  year.  Taxes  could  not  be  reduced  con 
veniently  :  half  this  income  came  from  the  tariff,  and  the 
government  was  pledged  not  to  disturb  that  until  1842  at 
least;  the  other  half  came  from  the  public  lands,  and  the 
West  would  not  listen  to  any  suggestion  for  shutting  down  on 
those  sales.  Accordingly,  the  government  decided  to  divide 
this  surplus  among  the  States.  The  money  then  found  its  way, 
as  State  deposits,  into  State  banks  and  into  the  same  round 
of  speculation.  To  avoid  constitutional  scruples,  this  gift  to 
the  States  was  called  a  "loan  without  interest."  Twenty- 
eight  million  dollars  were  distributed.  Then  the  "panic" 
seized  the  country,  and  before  the  end  of  1837  the  Treasury 
was  trying  to  borrow  money  for  necessary  expenses.  No  call 
was  ever  made  upon  the  States  for  a  return  of  the  "loan." 

In  the  final  year  of  his  administration,  Jackson  became 
alarmed  at  the  rapid  sale  of  public  lands,  paid  for  in  paper 
only;    and  his  famous  "Specie  Circular"  ordered  The  Specie 
United   States   land   offices   thereafter  to   accept  Circular  and 
only  gold  and  silver  in  payment  for  public  lands  t 
(July,  1836).     This  was  unmistakable  notice  to  the  country 
that  the  vast  bulk  of  its  currency  was  dubious  in  value, 
—  and  the  crash  came. 


472  VAN  BUREN 

Martin  Van  Buren,  of  New  York,  Jackson's  faithful 
counselor,  was  elected  to  the  presidency  that  fall,  in  time  to 
reap  the  whirlwind.  In  May,  1837,  every  bank  in  the 
country  suspended  specie  payment,  and  great  numbers 
closed  their  doors.  Gold  and  silver  went  into  hiding,  and 
bank  paper  depreciated  in  fantastic  and  varying  degrees 
in  different  parts  of  the  country,  but  everywhere  ruinously. 
Merchants  failed  ;  factories  closed  down  ;  unemployed  thou 
sands  faced  starvation.  The  Labor  movement  was  crushed 
out.  Normal  conditions  were  not  restored  for  five  years. 

Van  Buren  saw  his  chance  for  a  successful  administra 
tion  ruined  by  the  disaster,  but  he  met  the  situation  with 
Van  Buren's  calm  good  sense.  His  message  to  Congress  pointed 
administra-  out  the  real  causes  of  the  panic  and  the  slow  road 
back  to  prosperity.  Meantime,  for  the  govern 
ment  funds,  he  recommended  an  Independent  Treasury  (in 
dependent  of  all  banks).  In  1840  this  plan  was  adopted, 
though  for  some  years  the  Whigs  fought  desperately  to 
revive  their  pet  scheme  of  a  National  Bank.  The  govern 
ment  built  itself  great  vaults  at  Washington  and  other 
leading  cities ;  and  until  recently  the  National  funds  were 
handled  solely  in  these,  under  the  direction  of  the  Treasury 
Department. 

The  two  other  great  measures  of  Van  Buren's  four  years 
The  Pre-  were  the  ten-hour  order  (page  440)  and  a  pre- 

emptionAct     emptWH    ldW. 

By  1830,  the  sale  of  public  lands  was  bringing 
in  as  much  money  as  the  tariff.  The  revenue  was  not  then 
needed ;  and  the  well-to-do  classes  in  the  Eastern  States  felt 
that  the  lands  ought  to  be  sold  more  slowly,  so  as,  eventually, 
to  produce  more  revenue  when  it  should  be  more  needed 
(page  466).  The  new  States  stood  for  a  different  policy. 
They  looked  upon  the  public  lands  not  as  a  source  of  reve 
nue,  but  as  a  source  of  homes  and  as  a  means  of  develop 
ing  the  country,  and  were  ready  even  to  give  them  away,  in 
order  to  encourage  rapid  settlement.  The  workingmen 
of  the  North  Atlantic  section  threw  their  weight  over 
whelmingly  into  the  same  scale.  As  early  as  1828,  before 


THE  PUBLIC  DOMAIN  473 

the  West  itself  was  fully  aroused,  the  Mechanics'  Free 
Press  circulated  a  memorial  for  signature  among  its  con 
stituency,  urging  Congress  to  place  "all  the  Public  Lands, 
without  the  delay  of  sales,  within  reach  of  the  people  at  large, 
by  right  of  a  title  by  occupancy  only,"  since  "the  present 
state  of  affairs  must  lead  to  the  wealth  of  a  few,"  and  since 
"all  men  .  .  .  have  naturally  a  birthright  in  the  soil." 
And  says  Dr.  Commons  :  - 

"The  organized  workingmen  .  .  .  discovered  that  the  reason 
why  their  wages  did  not  rise  and  why  their  strikes  were  ineffective 
was  because  escape  from  the  crowded  cities  of  the  East  was  shut 
off  by  land  speculation.  In  their  conventions  and  papers,  there 
fore,  they  demanded  that  the  public  lands  should  no  more  be 
treated  as  a  source  of  revenue  to  relieve  taxpayers,  but  as  an 
instrument  of  social  reform  to  raise  the  wages  of  labor.  And  when 
we,  in  later  years,  refer  to  our  wide  domain  and  our  great  natural 
resources  as  reasons  for  high  wages  in  this  country,  it  is  well  to 
remember  that  access  to  these  resources  was  secured  only  by  agitation 
and  by  act  of  legislation.  Not  merely  as  a  gift  of  nature,  but 
mainly  as  a  demand  of  democracy,  have  the  nation's  resources  con 
tributed  to  the  elevation  of  labor." 

For  a  while  in  the  thirties,  the  West  urged  that  each  State 
should  be  given  all  the  public  domain  within  its  borders.  To 
steal  the  Democratic  thunder,  and  to  head  off  this  plan, 
which  would  have  destroyed  all  uniformity  in  dealing  with 
public  lands  and  wiped  out  a  powerful  bond  of  National 
union,  Clay  advocated  that  all  proceeds  of  public-land  sales 
should  be  distributed  among  the  States  in  proportion  to  their 
Congressional  representation.  His  first  bills  failed,  but,  with 
the  return  of  prosperity  in  1841,  he  carried  a  law  with  three 
features :  (1)  it  divided  among  the  States  (for  a  limited 
time)  90  per  cent  of  the  proceeds  of  the  land  sales ;  (2)  it 
inaugurated  the  policy,  since  maintained,  of  giving  to  each 
new  State  l  a  liberal  amount  of  lands  to  form  a  State  fund 

1  Similar  grants  were  provided  also  for  those  of  the  older  States  which  had 
not  already  had  a  liberal  control  over  the  lands  within  their  borders.  This  grant 
was  in  addition  to  the  customary  grant  of  school  lands,  and  followed  out  the  principle 
of  the  original  grant  to  Ohio  for  internal  improvements. 


474  VAN  BUREN 

for  internal  improvements ;  (3)  it  contained  the  famous 
provision  (championed  by  Benton  for  twenty  years)  which 
gave  to  the  whole  law  its  name  The  Preemption  Act. 

Until  this  time,  settlers  had  pushed  on  ahead  of  land- 
office  sales,  as  squatters.  Later  would  come  a  public  sale, 
wherein  the  land  office  put  up  each  "forty"  at  auction. 
Speculators  with  Eastern  money  attended,  eager  to  get 
choice  pieces.  A  settler  was  sometimes  outbid  (losing  the 
results  of  his  labor  upon  the  land  and  of  his  foresight  in 
selecting  it)  or  was  compelled  to  pay  much  more  than  the 
minimum  price  of  $1.25  an  acre  —  at  which  the  frontier 
community  felt  he  was  entitled  to  get  his  land.  The  preemp 
tion  law  provided  simple  means  by  which  the  settler  might 
"file  upon"  a  piece  of  land  in  advance  of  the  regular  sale, 
and  so  "pre-empt"  the  privilege  of  retaining  it  by  paying 
the  minimum  price  when  the  sale  came  on. 

Even  before  this  law,  its  purpose  had  been  commonly  se 
cured  by  ''Settlers'  Associations."  With  the  frontier  instinct 
"  Settlers'  ^or  rough  justice  even  at  the  expense  of  legal 
Associa-  forms,  the  settlers  had  learned  to  band  themselves 
together  to  maintain  "squatters'  rights"  at  these 
government  sales.  The  procedure  was  sometimes  dramatic. 
The  Association  "Captain"  sat  on  the  rude  platform  beside 
the  auctioneer,  —  a  list  of  settlers'  claims  in  hand  and  re 
volver  in  belt,  with  his  stalwart  associates,  armed,  in  the 
company  about.  When  a  piece  was  put  up  on  which  a 
squatter  had  made  improvements,  the  "Captain"  spoke  the 
word  "Settled,"  —  which  was  notice  to  outsiders  that  the 
settler  must  be  permitted  to  bid  it  in  at  the  minimum 
price  without  competition. 

An  incident  of  such  a  sale  in  Illinois  in  the  thirties  has  been 
described  to  the  writer  by  an  eye-witness  who  stood,  a  boy, 
on  the  outskirts  of  the  little  crowd.  The  "Captain"  was 
John  Campbell,  a  black-browed  Presbyterian  Scot,  standing 
six  feet  four.  In  one  case  an  Eastern  bidder  failed  to  hear,  or 
to  respect,  the  gruff  "Settled,"  and  made  a  higher  bid. 
With  a  bound  from  the  platform,  Campbell  seized  the 


"  TIPPECANOE  AND  TYLER  TOO  "  475 

offender  by  the  waist,  lifted  him  into  the  air,  hurled  him  to 
the  ground,  and,  foot  on  the  prostrate  form  and  cocked 
revolver  in  hand,  asked  significantly,  —  "Did  we  hear  you 
speak?"  Protestations  of  misunderstanding  and  earnest 
disclaimers  followed  from  the  frightened  man.  Bending 
forward,  Campbell  set  him,  none  too  gently,  on  his  feet, 
admonished  him  solemnly,  "See  that  it  doesn't  happen 
again"  ;  and  returned,  in  unruffled  dignity,  to  the  platform, 
where  the  government  official  had  been  quietly  waiting. 
The  land  was  then  knocked  down  to  the  squatter  at  the 
minimum  price,  and  the  sale  proceeded  decorously,  to  general 
satisfaction. 

The  campaign  of  1840  marks  the  final  disappearance  from 
American  politics  of  all  avowed  belief  in  aristocracy.     The 
two  parties  rivaled  each  other  in  proclaiming  devo-  Election 
tion  to  the  will  of  the  people  ;   and  the  Whigs  won  of  184° 
because    their   clamor    was   the   loudest   and    because    the 
Democrats  were  discredited  by  the  panic  of  '37. 

The  Whig  candidate  was  William  Henry  Harrison,  the 
victor  of  Tippecanoe.     An  opponent  referred  to  him  con 
temptuously  as  a  rude  frontiersman  fit  only  to  live  ,« xippe- 
in  a  log  cabin  and  drink  hard  cider.     The  Whigs  canoe  and 
turned  this  slur  into  effective  ammunition.     They  Tyler' to 
had   no    official    platform,    and    their    candidate    for    Vice 
President,  Tyler,  was  a  Statesrights  Democrat  who  happened 
to  be  hostile  to  Van  Buren.      But  they  swept  the  country 
in  a  "Hurrah  Boys"  campaign  for  "Tippecanoe  and  Tyler, 
too,"    -  the  chief  features  being  immense  mass  meetings  in 
the  country  and  torchlight  processions  in  the  cities,   with 
both    sorts   of   entertainment    centering   round   log   cabins 
and  barrels  of  cider. 

Harrison  carried  twenty  States,  to  six  for  the  Democrats, 
and  his  party  secured  a  working  majority  in  both  Houses  of 
Congress ;     but   the  new  President  died  within  a  Tyler's 
month  of  the  inauguration,  and  Tyler  opposed  his  vetoes 
veto  to  the  Whig  measures.     Two  bills  to  restore  a  United 
States  Bank  (in  place  of  the  Independent  Treasury)  fell  in 


476  TYLER'S  ADMINISTRATION 

this  way  in  August  and  September  of  1841.  Whig  papers 
raised  a  bitter  cry  of  "Judas  Iscariot"  ;  and  every  member  of 
the  Cabinet  resigned  except  Daniel  Webster.  In  like  manner 
the  veto  killed  two  bills  for  an  extreme  protective  tariff, 
but  a  third  and  more  moderate  measure  received  the  Presi 
dent's  approval.  The  compromise  of  1832,  which  had  just 
Tariff  of  taken  full  effect,  was  at  once  undone.  The  panic 
1842  Of  1837  had  depleted  the  treasury  ;  and,  aided  by 

the  cry  for  revenue,  the  protective  "Tariff  of  1842"  was 
enacted,  raising  the  rates  to  about  the  level  of  1832. 

The  Whigs  certainly  had  a  "mandate"  from  the  country 
for  the  change.  "Protection"  was  the  one  principle  that 
"  Protec-  they  kad  stood  for  in  the  campaign.  Curiously 
tion "  for  enough,  the  ground  on  which  they  had  de- 
high  wages  man(jed  "protection"  was  altogether  new.  The 
old  demand  (1816-1832)  had  been  aristocratic  —  in  the 
interest  of  wealth.  "Protect  the  manufacturers,"  it  said, 
"because  they  have  to  pay  such  high  wages."  The  new 
demand,  formulated  by  Horace  Greeley  and  advocated 
by  him  with  religious  fervor  in  his  New  York  Tribune, 
stood  for  social  and  democratic  reform  —  in  the  interest 
of  the  workers.  "Protect  manufactures,"  it  said,  "in  order 
that  the  workmen  may  continue  to  get  high  wages." 
Greeley  continued  to  preach  this  doctrine  for  more  than 
thirty  years;  and  during  all  that  time  his  paper  was  the 
most  influential  publication  in  America.  Almost  at  once, 
however,  the  contest  over  slavery  drew  public  attention 
away  from  other  problems;  and  this  new  argument  for 
protective  tariffs  was  not  duly  sifted  until  a  much  later 
time. 

Tariff  history,  down  to  the  Civil  War,  is  conveniently 
disposed  of  here  in  a  few  words.  The  Democrats  came 
other  back  to  power  at  the  next  election,  and  enacted  the 

tariffs  "Walker   revenue   tariff"  of  1846.     Imports  such 

as  coffees  and  teas  and  other  articles  of  common 
use,  not  produced  in  the  United  States,  were  taxed  very  high, 
while  manufactures  previously  protected  (iron,  wool,  etc.) 


DORR'S    REBELLION  477 

were  taxed  only  thirty  per  cent.  The  measure  was  called 
a  free-trade  tariff,  but  it  afforded  a  moderate  degree  of 
protection,  besides  nearly  doubling  the  revenue.  In  1857 
rates  were  reduced  materially  for  a  time,  to  a  real  "tariff 
for  revenue"  basis. 

Webster  kept  his  unpleasant  position  as  Secretary  of  State 
under  Tyler  in  order  to  complete  an  important  negotiation 
with  England.     Soon  after  the  settlement  of  the  Webster. 
dispute  regarding  the  St.  Croix  River  (page  325),  Ashburton 
another  difference  of  opinion  had  arisen  regarding 
the   northern   boundary   of    Maine    farther    to    the    west. 
England  claimed  one  line,  and  the  United  States  another, 
from  different  interpretations  of  the  words  of  the  Treaty  of 
1783.     The  King  of  the  Netherlands,  to  whom  as  arbitrator 
the  contention  was  submitted,  exceeded   his  province  by 
drawing  a  compromise  line  without  reference  to  the  merits  of 
the  question ;   and  the  United  States  refused  to  accept  the 
award.      In  1842  the  question  was  settled  by  the  Webster- 
Ashburton  Treaty,  which  gave  each  country  about  half  the 
disputed  territory. 

No  story  of  this  period  can  afford  to  ignore  a  striking 
episode  in  the  struggle  for  democracy  within  Rhode  Island. 
In  that  state  in  the  latter  part  of  the  colonial  Dorr's 
period,  the  franchise  had  become  the  narrowest  Rebellion 
perhaps,  in  any  colony.  No  man  could  vote  unless  he  owned 
real  estate  worth  $134>  or  unless  he  were  the  oldest  son  of  such 
a  man.  Moreover,  the  smallest  town  had  as  much  weight  in 
the  legislature  as  the  capital  city  —  which  contained  about  a 
third  of  the  whole  population.  For  sixty  years  after  the 
Revolution,  these  abuses  continued.  The  people  had  long 
clamored  for  reform,  but  the  close  oligarchy  paid  no  attention 
to  the  cry.  In  1841,  unable  to  get  action  through  the  oli 
garchic  legislature,  a  People's  party  arranged,  without  legisla 
tive  approval,  for  the  election  of  a  constitutional  convention  by 
manhood  suffrage.  The  great  mass  of  the  citizens  took  part 
in  choosing  the  convention ;  and  its  new  constitution  was 
duly  ratified  by  a  popular  vote.  Then  the  people  chose 


478  TYLER'S  ADMINISTRATION 

their  leader  in  this  revolution,  Thomas  Wilson  Dorr,  for 
governor  under  the  new  constitution.  The  old  "  charter  gov 
ernment"  refused  to  surrender  possession  of  the  government, 
and  was  supported  by  President  Tyler,  with  the  promise  of 
Federal  troops.  The  revolutionary  government  then  van 
ished,  and  Dorr  was  tried  for  treason,  and  condemned  to 
imprisonment  for  life  at  hard  labor.  The  democratic  up 
rising  is  known  as  Dorr's  Rebellion. 

The  oligarchic  "charter  government"  saw,  however,  that 
it  must  give  way,  but  it  sought,  successfully,  to  save  some 
thing  from  the  wreck.  It  called  a  constitutional  convention, 
while  hundreds  of  democratic  leaders  were  in  jail  under 
martial  law  sentences ;  and  though  its  new  constitution 
(1842)  provided  for  manhood  suffrage  for  native  Americans, 
the  landed  qualification  for  naturalized  citizens  was  main 
tained  (until  1882),  along  with  the  "rotten  borough"  basis 
for  the  upper  House  of  the  legislature,  and  with  the  appoint 
ment  of  local  officers  by  that  House.  The  first  legislature 
of  the  new  government  set  Dorr  free  by  special  act,  —  not 
by  the  usual  form  of  pardon ;  but  this  martyr  to  the  cause 
of  constitutional  freedom  died  some  years  later  from  disease 
contracted  in  his  unwholesome  prison  life. 


PART  IX  — SLAVERY 
CHAPTER   XXVIII 

SLAVERY  TO   1844 

IN  1844  the  Slave  Power  began  to  demand  more  territory ; 
and,  for  the  next  twenty  years,  slavery  was  the  dominant 
question  in  American  politics.  This  chapter  is  an  intro 
duction  to  that  story. 

The  Revolution,  with  its  emphasis  upon  human  rights, 
created  the  first  antislavery  movement.1     This  movement 
lasted    until    about    1820,    though    it    spent    its 
greatest   force  before   1800.     It  was    moral    and  before  1820 
religious,  rather  than  political,   belonging  to  the  °nthe 

o       ii.  •*  u  xi_        XT      ?u  i    defensive 

South    quite    as    much    as    to    the    North ;    and 
it    was   considerate   of    the    slaveholder's    difficulties.     On 
their    part,  the    slaveholders    during    this    period    (outside 
Georgia  and  South  Carolina)   apologized  for  slavery  as  an 
evil  they  would  be  glad  to  get  rid  of  safely. 

Slavery  seemed  dying.     Vermont's  constitution  of  1777 
abolished  slavery,  as  did  that  of  Massachusetts,  indirectly, 
in  1780  (page  215)  and  that  of  New  Hampshire  in  Gradual 
1783.     By  law,  Pennsylvania  decreed  freedom  for  emanci- 
all  children  born  to  slave  parents  in  her  territory  patl( 
after    1780;    and   this   sort   of  gradual    emancipation    was 
adopted  in  Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island  in  1784,  in  New 
York  in  1799,  and  in  New  Jersey  in  1804. 

After  1804,  no  slave  could  be  born  north  of  Mason  and 
Dixon's  line;  but  nearly  all  the  "free  States"  continued  to 
contain  slaves  born  before  "gradual  emancipation"  began. 

1  So,  too,  Revolutionary  France  abolished  slavery  in  her  West  Indies  in  1794, 
as  did  the  Spanish-American  States,  without  exception,  as  they  won  their  in 
dependence  after  1815. 

479 


480  SLAVERY  BEFORE  1844 

The  census  of  1830  showed  some  2700  in  the  North ;  and  as 
late  as  1850  New  Jersey  counted  236.  So,  too,  all  the  States 
of  the  Old  Northwest,  except  Michigan,  contained  some 
slaves  in  1840,  —  survivors  of  those  owned  by  the  original 
French  settlers.  The  antislavery  provision  in  the  North 
west  Ordinance  was  interpreted,  in  practice,  not  to  free 
existing  slaves,  but  merely  to  forbid  the  introduction  of 
new  ones. 

In  the  Southern  States,  too,  many  leaders  urged  gradual 
emancipation  with  provision  for  removing  the  Negroes.  This 
sentiment  created  the  American  Colonization  So 
ciety,  which  established  the  Negro  Republic  of 
Liberia  on  the  African  coast  as  a  home  for  ex-slaves.  The 
Society  proved  unable,  however,  to  send  Negroes  to  Africa 
as  rapidly  as  they  were  born  in  America. 

If  slavery  was  to  die,  two  things  were  essential :  new 
slaves  must  not  be  imported  from  abroad,  and  slavery 
must  not  spread  into  new  territory. 

Between  1776  and  1781,  the  foreign  slave  trade  was  pro 
hibited  by  every  State  except  South  Carolina  and  Georgia. 
Foreign  In  deference  to  the  demand  of  these  two  States, 
slave  trade  the  Constitution  permitted  the  importation  of 
slaves  for  a  limited  time  (page  287) ;  but  as  soon  as  the 
twenty-year  period  had  expired,  the  trade  was  prohibited 
by  Congress.  Still  the  trade  lived  and  grew. 

From  1807,  England  had  kept  a  naval  patrol  on  the 
African  coast  to  intercept  "slavers,"  who  were  regarded  as 
pirates  by  most  European  nations.  Unhappily,  England's 
invitations  to  the  United  States  to  join  in  this  good  work,  in 
1817  and  1824,  were  rejected  by  our  Government.  The 
War  of  1812  had  made  Americans  exceedingly  sensitive 
regarding  the  "right  of  search,"  and  we  now  refused  to  per 
mit  an  English  ship  to  search  a  vessel  flying  the  American 
flag,  even  to  ascertain  whether  that  flag  covered  an  Amer 
ican  ship.  Consequently  our  flag  was  used  by  slavers  of  all 
nations  (especially,  it  must  be  confessed,  of  our  own), 
engaged  in  the  horrible  and  lucrative  business  of  stealing 
Negroes  in  Africa  to  sell  in  Brazil  or  Cuba,  or,  after  running 


THE  SLAVE  TRADE  481 

our  ineffective  patrol,  in  the  cities  of  South  Carolina,  where 
little  disguise  was  made  of  the  defiance  of  the  Federal  law. 
In  1842,  in  the  Ashburton  Treaty,  the  United  States  joined 
England  in  an  agreement  to  keep  a  joint  squadron  off  the 
coast  of  Africa  to  suppress  the  trade ;  but  we  did  not  take 
our  proper  share  in  this  work  until  after  the  opening  of  the 
Civil  War.  Between  1850  and  1860,  the  trade  grew  rapidly, 
and  hundreds  of  thousands  of  Negroes  fresh  from  the  African 
jungle  were  auctioned  off  in  Southern  markets. 

Slavery  had  "  followed  the  flag  "  as  settlement  expanded, 
except  for  the  region  protected,  none  too  perfectly,  by  the 
Northwest    Ordinance.      Congress  vacillated.     It 
established  slavery  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  and  in  the*7 
reenacted  the  slave  code  of  Virginia  and  Maryland  District  of 
for  that  District.     Accordingly,  under  the  shadow 
of  the  Capitol,  a  strange    Negro    might    be    arrested    and 
advertised   on   the   suspicion   of   being   an   escaped    slave ; 
and  if  no  owner  appeared  to  prove  that  suspicion,  he  might 
still  be  sold  into  slavery  to  satisfy  the  jailer's  fees.     And 
for    the   Nation    at    large    Congress   passed    the    infamous 
Fugitive  Slave  Act  of  1793;   but  it  resisted  many  attempts 
by  the  people  of  Indiana  and  Illinois  to  secure  the  repeal 
of  the  antislavery    provision    of    the    Northwest  And  in  the 
Ordinance.     None  the  less  the  government  winked  Northwest 
at  evasion  of   that  provision.      Thousands   of   slaves   were 
brought  into  the  two  Territories  under  forms  of  indenture  or 
of  "labor  contracts" ;    and  Territorial   "Black  laws"   were 
enacted  to  sanction  this  disguised  slavery.     "To  all  intents 
and   purposes,"    says    Professor   McMaster,    "slavery    was 
as   much   a   domestic  institution  of  Illinois  in   1820  as  of 
Kentucky." 

The  ten  years  from  the  Missouri  Compromise  to  the  election 
of  Jackson  (1820-1829)  form  a  transition  period.     Slavery 
was  still  defended  as  an  evil,  but  as  an  evil  inevi-  Thesecond 
table  and  permanent.     Its  defenders  still  stood  on  period, 
the  defensive,  but  they  were  less  apologetic  in  tone.   1820~1829 

This  new  attitude  was  due  to  a  moneyed  interest.     Slavery 


482  •      SLAVERY  BEFORE  1844 

was  growing  more  profitable.  The  increased  efficiency  of 
slave  labor  because  of  the  cotton  gin  raised  the  value  of  a 
field  hand  from  $200  in  1790  to  $1000  in  1840.  The  Border 
States,  where  slavery  had  never  been  particularly  profitable, 
found  that  they  could  raise  and  sell  slaves  at  high  prices 
to  more  Southern  communities.  Moreover,  the  admission  of 
Louisiana  as  a  slave  State,  together  with  the  extension  of 
slavery  into  the  rest  of  the  Southwest,  made  its  overthrow 
seem  less  possible. 

The  struggle  over  the  Missouri  Compromise  was  the  first 
great  indication  of  this  changing  attitude.  The  measure 
And  the  was  distinctly  Southern.  It  won  Missouri  and 
Missouri  Arkansas  to  slavery  ;  and  this  extension  was  favored 
6  by  Clay,  Madison,  and  the  aged  Jefferson!  Not  a 
Southern  congressman  voted  for  a  "  free  Missouri  "  ;  while 
only  fifteen  Northerners  voted  against  the  restriction  on 
slavery  —  and  only  three  of  these  secured  reelection. 

These  ten  years  of  transition  bring  us  to  the  third  and  final 
period.  By  1830  the  Slave  Power  had  become  aggressive.  It 
advocated  slavery  thereafter  as  a  good,  economic 
aggressive  and  moral,  for  both  slave  and  master,  and  as 
^le  on^  corner  stone  for  the  highest  type  of 
civilization.  In  consequence,  the  Negro  was 
represented  as  animal  rather  than  human,  and  wholly 
unfit  for  freedom.  Calhoun  devoted  the  remaining  years 
of  his  life  to  advocating  these  views. 

By  1830,  too,  slavery  had  taken  on  somewhat  darker 
phases  than  were  common  in  the  earlier  period.  In  Virginia 
Darker  and  the  Border  States  it  continued,  on  the  whole, 
phases  humane  and  semi-patriarchal,  except  for  the  dis 
tressing  sale  of  parts  of  a  slave  family.  But  the  plantation 
type  of  slavery,  formerly  characteristic  mainly  of  Carolina 
or  Georgia  rice  swamps,  had  now  been  extended  over 
vast  cotton  areas  in  all  the  " Lower  South."  Even  in  that 
district,  of  course,  the  house  servants  were  petted  and  gently 
cared  for,  as  a  rule ;  and  often  between  masters  and  slaves 
there  was  warm  affection.  On  most  plantations,  too,  where 


SLAVERY  BECOMES  AGRESSIVE  AFTER  1829        483 

the  owner's  family  resided,  master  and  mistress  felt  a  high 
sense  of  duty  to  their  helpless  "charges,"  even  of  the  field- 
hand  class.  But  the  majority  of  plantations  were  managed 
by  overseers,  drawn  from  the  lower  strata  of  the  Whites, 
brutalized  by  irresponsible  and  despotic  power,  and  forced 
to  be  hard  taskmasters  by  the  system  under  which  they 
lived.  The  overseer's  reputation  as  a  valuable  man  de 
pended  solely  upon  the  number  of  bales  of  cotton  he  could 
turn  out ;  and  he  was  tempted  increasingly  to  drive  harder 
and  more  mercilessly.  State  laws  forbade  murdering  a 
slave  at  the  whipping-post ;  but  a  loop-hole  was  usually 
provided  by  some  clause  pronouncing  the  owner  or  overseer 
guiltless  if  a  slave  "died"  as  the  result  of  only  "moderate 
correction."  In  any  case,  a  Negro's  testimony  could  not 
be  taken  against  a  White  man,  and  often  the  merciless 
overseer  was  the  only  White  present  at  his  crimes. 

It  was  the  general  belief,  too,  that  the  Negro  would  work 
only  under  the  lash  or  the  fear  of  it ;  and  it  was  a  common 
thing  for  the  overseer  to  furnish  long  whips  to  the  "drivers" 
(chosen  usually  from  the  more  brutal  slaves),  who  stalked 
up  and  down  between  the  rows  of  workers.  In  the  extreme 
South,  it  was  not  unheard  of  for  a  master  himself  to  avow 
the  economic  policy  of  working  to  death  his  gang  of  slaves 
every  seven  years  or  so,  in  favor  of  a  new  supply.  In  general, 
however,  critical  observers  had  to  confess  that  the  same 
motives  which  secure  reasonable  treatment  for  a  teamster's 
horses  kept  the  slave  in  good  condition. 

Among  the  worst  direct  evils  of  the  system  was  the  ruin 
to  family  life.  The  better  sort  of  Whites  tried  to  keep  slave 
families  together ;  but  legislation  did  not  compel  this 
decency,  and,  in  practice,  the  division  of  families  was 
exceedingly  common.  Indeed,  the  southern  branches  of  the 
Protestant  churches,  by  formal  resolution,  recognized  the 
separate  sale  of  a  husband  or  wife  as  a  true  "divorce,"  and 
permitted  "remarriage"  on  such  ground.  In  consequence  of 
this  condition,  sex  relations  remained  horribly  degraded 
and  confused. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  South  pointed  to  the  pitiful  con- 


484  SLAVERY  BEFORE  1844 

dition  of  the  mass  of  White  labor  in  Northern  factories,  and 
argued  eagerly  that  the  slave  was  no  worse  off.  Said 
DeBow's  Review,  the  leading  Southern  periodical,  —  "Where 
a  man  is  compelled  to  labor  at  the  will  of  another,  and  to  give 
him  much  the  greater  portion  of  the  product  of  his  labor, 
there  Slavery  exists ;  and  it  is  immaterial  by  what  sort  of 
compulsion  the  will  of  the  laborer  be  subdued.  It  is  what 
no  human  being  would  do  without  some  sort  of  compulsion 
-  if  not  blows,  then  torture  to  his  will  by  fear  of  starvation 
for  himself  or  his  family." 

The  new  aggressive  attitude  of  the  Slave  Power  was 
caused  in  some  degree  by  the  appearance  of  new  aggressive 
The  Aboil-  antislavery  workers,  known  as  Abolitionists,  who 
tionists  cried  out  for  immediate  and  complete  destruction  of 
slavery.  For  some  years  before  1830,  Benjamin  Lundy  had 
published  at  Baltimore  The  Genius  of  Universal  Emancipa 
tion,  devoted  to  this  teaching.  In  1828  Lundy  found  a  greater 
disciple  in  one  of  his  assistant  printers,  William  Lloyd 
Garrison.  Young,  poor,  friendless,  in  1831  Garrison  began 
in  Boston  the  publication  of  the  Liberator;  and  the  first 
number  (printed  on  paper  secured  with  difficulty  on  credit, 
and  set  up  wholly  by  Garrison's  own  hand)  carried  at  its 
head  a  declaration  of  war  :  — 

"Let    Southern    oppressors    tremble  ...  I    shall    strenuously 
contend  for  immediate  enfranchisement  ...  I  will  be  as  harsh  as 
truth  and  as  uncompromising  as  justice  ...  I  do  not  wish  to 
think,  or  speak,  or  write,  with  moderation  ...  I  am  in  earnest  — 
I  will  not  equivocate  —  I  will  not  retreat  a  single  inch  —  AND  i 

WILL  BE  HEARD." 

To  the  end,  this  remained  the  keynote  of  the  Garrisonian 
Abolitionists.  They  sought  to  arouse  the  moral  sense  of  the 
North  against  slavery  as  a  wrong  to  human  nature.  For 
long  years  their  vehemence  made  them  social  outcasts,  even 
when  they  were  not  in  danger  of  physical  violence.  Among 
the  group  were  Wendell  Phillips,  a  youth  of  high  social 
position  and  opportunity,  who  forsook  his  career  to  become 
the  hated  and  despised  orator  of  the  Abolition  cause ; 


AND  THE  ABOLITIONISTS  485 

Whittier,  the  gentle  Quaker  poet,  whose  verse  rang  like  a 
bugle  call ;  Theodore  Parker,  a  Unitarian  minister  of  Boston, 
"the  terrible  pastor  of  Abolition";  and,  at  a  later  time, 
James  Russell  Lowell,  whose  scathing  satire  in  the  Biglow 
Papers  struck  most  effective  blows  for  freedom,  and  whose 
established  position  helped  to  make  Abolitionism  "respect 
able." 

Of  this  body  of  agitators,  Garrison  remained  the  most 
extreme.     He  could  see  no  part  of  the  slaveholder's  side, 
and  he  dealt  only   in   stern   denunciation   of   all  ^miam 
opponents  —  and  even  of  moderate  supporters.    He  Lloyd 
and  his  group  had  no  direct  influence  upon  political 
action  against  slavery.'    Many  of  them  disclaimed  desire  for 
any  such  influence.     Garrison  once  burned  in  public  a  copy 
of  the  Constitution,  defaming  it  as  "a  Covenant  with  Death 
and  an  agreement  with  Hell"  ;    and  the  only  political  action 
advocated  by  him  for  Northern  men  was  secession  by  the 
free  States.     So,  too,  Lowell's  "  Hosea  Biglow  "  exclaims  :  — 

"  Ef  I'd  my  way,  I  hed  ruther 
We  should  go  to  work  an'  part,  — 
They  take  one  way,  we  take  t'other,  — 
Guess  it  wouldn't  break  my  heart. 
Men  hed  ought  to  put  asunder 
Them  that  God  has  noways  jined ; 
An'  I  shouldn't  gretly  wonder 
Ef  there's  thousands  of  my  mind." 

A  more  moderate  group  of  Abolitionists  contained  such 
men  as  William  Ellery  Channing,  James  Freeman  Clarke, 
Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson,  and  Samuel  J.  May  The ,« mod. 
(Unitarian  ministers) ,  Emerson,  Longfellow,  Gerrit  erate  "  Abo- 
Smith,  William  Jay,  and  the  aged  Gallatin.  For  l 
Channing's  logical  but  temperate  indictment  of  slavery,  Gar 
rison,  however,  had  only  abuse.  In  return,  Emerson  at  first 
condemned  the  Garrisonian  extremists  with  unaccustomed 
harshness;  but  later  he  said  that  "they  might  be  wrong- 
headed,  but  they  were  wrong-headed  in  the  right  direction" 

Other  foes  of  slavery,   like  Lincoln,   rejected  the  name 
Abolitionist,  altogether,  and  declared  that  the  Garrisonian 


486  SLAVERY  FROM   1829  TO  1844 

group  harmed  more  than  they  helped.  Garrison  and  his 
friends  did  rouse  bitter  antagonism  and  make  their  oppo 
nents  more  aggressive :  but  they  achieved  their  purpose  by 
being  "heard."  The  nation  would  have  been  glad  to  forget 
the  wrongs  of  slavery :  these  men  made  that  impossible  - 
sometimes  by  exaggerating  and  misrepresenting  those  wrongs 
-  and  they  trusted  to  the  moral  sense  of  the  people  to  do  the 
rest.  They  made  slavery  a  topic  of  discussion  at  every 
Northern  fireside,  —  and  slavery  could  not  stand  discussion. 

A  slaveholding  community  lives  always  over  a  sleeping 
volcano.  The  unspoken  dread  of  all  southern  Whites  was  a 
Nat  possible  slave  insurrection,  with  its  unimaginable 

Turner's  horrors.  Earlier  in  the  century,  two  plots  had 
1  been  discovered,  by  fortunate  accidents,  just 
in  time  to  avert  terrible  disaster.  Then,  in  1831,  came 
Nat  Turner's  rising.  Turner  was  a  Negro  preacher  and 
slave  in  Virginia.  The  plot  so  far  miscarried  that  only 
a  handful  of  slaves  took  part;  but  sixty  Whites,  includ 
ing  several  children,  were  ferociously  massacred,  and, 
before  order  was  restored,  a  hundred  Negroes  (five  times 
the  number  in  the  rising)  were  shot,  hanged,  tortured, 
or  burned.  The  South  was  thrown  into  a  frenzy  of 
terror  and  rage.  Excited  opinion  charged  that  the  rising 
was  due  directly  to  inflammatory  articles  in  Garrison's 
Liberator.  Southern  States  enacted  stricter  laws  against 
the  education  and  freedom  of  movement  of  slaves,  and  even 
of  free  Negroes,  and  the  legislature  of  Georgia  offered  a 
reward  of  $5000  to  any  kidnaper  who  should  bring  Garrison 
to  that  State  for  trial  under  her  laws  against  inciting  servile 
insurrection. 

The  Slave  Power  now  attacked  the  rights  of  White  men. 
After  1831  the  former  freedom  of  discussion  about  slavery 
The  Slave  vanished  south  of  Mason  and  Dixon's  line.  Anti- 
Power  at-  slavery  societies  dissolved ;  antislavery  meetings 

tacks  the  u  i  i    i_    11  j-  ? 

rights  of  could  no  longer  find  halls  or  audiences ;  anti- 
White  men  slavery  publications  were  forced  out.  In  many 
cases  these  ends  were  secured  by  mob  violence.  In  1835 


THE  ATTACK  ON  FREE  SPEECH  487 

James  G.  Birney,  a  Kentuckian  who  had  long  worked 
valiantly  against  slavery  in  Alabama  and  in  his  native 
State,  was  driven  to  move  his  antislavery  paper  across 
the  Ohio  to  Cincinnati.  Even  there,  his  office  was  sacked, 
and  his  life  sought,  by  a  bloodthirsty  proslavery  mob, 
largely  from  Kentucky,  while  respectable  Cincinnati  citi 
zens  merely  advised  him  to  seek  safety  in  silence. 

This  was  in  1836.  The  year  before,  a  Boston  mob,  "in 
broadcloth  and  silk  hats,"  had  broken  up  one  of  Garrison's 
meetings,  gutted  his  printing  office,  and  dragged  Garrison 
himself  through  the  streets  by  a  rope  around  his  body  - 
until  he  was  rescued  and  protected  by  the  mayor  by  being 
jailed!  And  in  Alton,  Illinois,  the  year  after  (1837),  mobs 
twice  sacked  the  office  of  Elijah  Lovejoy,  an  Abolitionist 
editor,  and  finally  murdered  Lovejoy  when  he  tried  to 
defend  his  property  from  a  third  assault. 

A  free,  press  was  the  particular  object  of  attack ;  and  for 
many  years  practically  every  Abolitionist  paper  in  cities 
large  or  small  ran  danger  of  such  destruction.  Attacks 
Scores  of  cases  might  be  given.  In  the  little  upon  a 
frontier  village  of  St.  Cloud,  Minnesota,  a  pro-  i 
slavery  mob  sacked  the  printing  office  of  Mrs.  Jane  G. 
Swisshelm,  and  threw  her  press  into  the  Mississippi. 
There  was  this  difference  in  the  matter,  however,  between 
North  and  South.  In  the  South,  discussion  was  abso 
lutely  strangled.  In  the  North,  Lovejoy  was  the  only 
martyr  to  suffer  death ;  and  resolute  men  and  women 
found  it  possible  to  continue  the  discussion,  and  eventu 
ally  to  win  a  hearing.  At  St.  Cloud,  a  mass  meeting, 
excited  not  in  behalf  of  Abolitionism,  but  by  the  attack  upon 
free  speech,  promptly  subscribed  money  to  replace  the 
press,  —  no  small  thing  in  a  petty  frontier  village  of  working- 
men.  By  contrast,  respectable  people  and  large  property 
interests  showed  a  curious  cowardice  in  these  conflicts. 
Alton,  in  a  measure,  was  dependent  upon  trade  from  the 
Missouri  side  of  the  Mississippi.  Cincinnati's  prosperity, 
in  like  fashion,  was  supposed  to  depend  upon  Kentucky 
trade.  In  both  towns  the  cry  arose  that  antislavery  publi- 


488  SLAVERY  FROM   1829  TO    1844 

cations  alienated  the  Slave  State  visitors  and  customers, 
and  "hurt  business"  ;  and,  before  this  direful  threat,  mayors, 
ministers,  bankers,  and  every  newspaper  in  both  cities  were 
whipped  into  submission,  quite  in  the  fashion  of  later  times. 

Mob  attacks  upon  free  speech  were  ominous  to  all  men 
who  really  cared  for  their  own  rights,  and  they  summoned 
to  the  antislavery  cause  many  who  had  never  been  moved  by 
wrong  to  the  Negro  ;  but  still  more  significant  were  demands 
by  the  South  that  the  National  government  and  the  North 
ern  States  should  by  law  stifle  discussion. 

In  1835,  in  response  to  vehement  appeals  from  Southern 
legislatures,  President  Jackson  recommended  Congress  to 
And  the  pass  laws  that  would  exclude  "incendiary  publica- 
mails  tions"  from  the  mails.  "But,"  cried  antislavery 

men  —  and  many  others  never  before  so  counted  —  "  Who  is 
to  judge  what  is  incendiary  ?  On  such  a  charge,  the.  Bible  or 
the  Constitution  might  be  excluded."  After  a  sharp  struggle, 
the  bill  failed  to  pass,  but  there  followed  an  even  more  ar 
rogant  attempt  to  destroy  the  ancient  right  of  petition. 
Since  1820,  petitions  had  poured  upon  Congress  in  ever  in 
creasing  bulk  for  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  District  of 
Columbia.  In  the  ordinary  course,  such  a  petition  was 
referred  to  an  appropriate  committee,  and  if  ever  reported 
upon,  it  was  rejected.  But  in  1836,  the  sensitive  Southern 
And  the  members  secured  a  "gag  resolution"  which  each 
right  of  new  Congress  for  eight  years  incorporated  in  its 
standing  rules,  —  so  that  all  petitions  concerning 
slavery  should  be  "laid  on  the  table"  without  being  discussed 
or  printed  or  read. 

The  Slave  Power  thought  exultantly  that  it  had  choked 
off  discussion.  Instead,  it  had  merely  identified  the  anti- 
The "  Old  slavery  movement  with  a  traditional  right  of 
Man  the  English-speaking  people.  The  "Old  Man 

Eloquent,"  John  Quincy  Adams,  now  Representa 
tive  from  a  Massachusetts  district  and  formerly  indifferent 
to  slavery,  crowned  his  long  public  life  with  its  chief  glory 
by  standing  forth  as  the  unconquerable  champion  of  the 


THE  ATTACK  ON  FREE  SPEECH  489 

right  of  petition,  —  which,  he  insisted,  meant  that  his  con 
stituents  and  others  had  not  merely  the  right  to  send  peti 
tions  to  the  Congressional  waste-paper  basket,  but  the  right 
to  have  their  petitions  read  and  considered.  Tireless,  skill 
ful,  indomitable,  unruffled  by  tirades  of  abuse,  quick  to  take 
advantage  of  all  parliamentary  openings,  Adams  wore  out 
his  opponents  and  roused  the  country ;  and  in  1844  the  gag 
rule  was  abandoned. 

Thus  while  Garrisonian  Abolitionists  were  trying  to  per 
suade  the  North  that  slavery  was  a  moral  wrong  to  the 
Negro,  the  folly  of  the  Slave  Power  called  into 
being  a   new   Abolitionist   party   which   thought  political 
of  slavery  first  and  foremost    as    dangerous    to  Abolition- 
Northern  rights.     This   party  went  into  politics 
to  limit  slavery  by  all   constitutional   means   in   the   hope 
of  sometime  ending  it.     The  "political  Abolitionists"  were 
strongest  in  the  Middle  and   North   Central   States ;    and 
among  their  leading  representatives  were  Birney  and    the 
young  Democratic  lawyer,  Salmon  P.  Chase.     Says  Professor 
Hart,  the  biographer  of  the  latter :  - 

"Like  thousands  of  other  antislavery  men  .  .  .  Chase  was 
aroused,  not  by  the  wrongs  of  the  slave,  but  by  the  dangers  to 
free  White  men.  He  did  not  hear  the  cries  of  the  Covington 
whipping  post  across  the  river  [the  Ohio],  but  he  could  not  mis 
take  the  shouts  of  the  mob  which  destroyed  Birney's  property 
and  sought  his  life ;  and  his  earliest  act  as  an  antislavery  man 
was  to  stand  for  the  everyday  right  of  a  fellow  resident  of  Cin 
cinnati  to  express  his  mind." 


CHAPTER  XXIX 

SLAVERY  AND   EXPANSION 

IN  1825  Mexico  became  independent  of  Spain  (page  407) 
and  decreed  gradual  emancipation  of  all  slaves.  In  1835 
Texas  wins  Santa  Anna  made  himself  dictator  of  the  country, 
independ-  Texas  was  one  of  the  States  of  Mexico.  Its 
settlers  were  mainly  from  the  Southwestern  States 
of  our  Union.  They  held  slaves,  and  until  Santa  Anna's 
usurpation,  they  had  had  a  large  amount  of  self-govern 
ment.  Fearing  the  loss  of  these  political  rights  and  perhaps 
also  the  ruin  of  slavery,  they  now  seceded  from  Mexico, 
organized  an  independent  state,  and  chose  for  their  presi 
dent  "Sam"  Houston,  a  famous  Indian  fighter  and  an  old 
friend  of  Andrew  Jackson. 

In  March  of  1836,  a  Mexican  army  "invaded"  Texas, 
and  routed  several  small  forces  that  ventured  to  stand 
against  them.  One  body  of  183  Texans  in  the  Alamo  (a 
fortified  Mission)  held  out  gallantly  for  thirteen  days  — 
which  so  incensed  Santa  Anna  that  he  massacred  every 
prisoner.  April  21,  the  Mexicans  met  the  main  body  of 
Texan  frontiersmen  under  Houston  at  San  Jacinto.  The 
Texans  charged  six  times  their  number  with  the  vengeful 
cry,  "Remember  the  Alamo,"  and  won  a  complete  victory. 
The  independence  of  Texas  was  promptly  recognized  by 
the  United  States.  Mexico,  however,  did  not  give  up 
her  claims. 

The  Texans  hoped  to  be  annexed  to  the  United  States. 
Indeed,  many  of  them  had  gone  to  the  country  years  before 
The  ques-  with  that  express  plan  —  as  other  Americans  still 
tion  of  earlier  had  gone  into  West  Florida.  War  between 
annexation  the  United  States  and  the  proud  and  sensitive 
Mexicans  would  almost  certainly  follow  ;  but  our  South,  too, 

490 


ANNEXATION  OF  TEXAS  491 

clamored  for  the  annexation.  Texas  was  an  immense  terri 
tory,  and  was  expected  to  make  at  least  five  slave  States. 
The  West,  also,  was  eager  for  more  territory,  and  had  few 
scruples  against  fighting  Mexico  to  get  it ;  but  in  the  North 
west  there  was  some  opposition  to  extending  the  area  of 
slavery,  and  New  England  opposed  annexation  fiercely. 

In  1844  President  Tyler  negotiated  with  Texas  an  annexa 
tion  treaty,  but  the  Whig  Senate  rejected  it  by  a  decisive 
vote.  Shortly  before,  John  Quincy  Adams  and  twenty-one 
other  Northern  members  of  Congress  had  united  in  a  letter 
to  their  constituents  advising  New  England  to  secede  from 
the  Union  if  Tyler's  "nefarious "  scheme  went  through.  The 
Massachusetts  legislature  responded  with  resolutions  declar 
ing  their  State  "  determined  ...  to  submit  to  undelegated 
powers  in  no  body  of  men  on  earth "  [an  echo  of  the 
Kentucky  Resolutions  of  1799],  and  asserting  that  the 
movement  to  annex  Texas,  "  unless  arrested  on  the  thresh 
old,  may  tend  to  drive  these  States  into  a  dissolution  of  the 
Union."  On  the  other  side,  "fire-eating"  Southerners  were 
shouting,  "Texas  or  disunion  ! "  The  Slave  Power  now  raised 
the  cry  that  England  would  get  Texas  if  we  did  not,  and  it 
played  artfully  on  the  sentiment  for  expansion.  Calhoun 
warned  the  slave  States  of  the  Southwest  that  And  the 
England  was  trying  to  persuade  Texas  to  abolish  demand  for 
slavery ;  and  the  Northwest  was  won  over  by  the  ( 
shrewd  device  of  combining  with  the  demand  for  Texas  a 
demand  for  "all  of  Oregon." 

Oregon  was  a  vast  territory  bounded  then  by  the  42d  parallel  on 
the  South  (page  406)  and  by  the  line  of  54°  40'  on  the  North  (page 
409).  The  agreement  with  England  for  "joint  occupation'*  was 
still  in  force  (page  407) ;  but  of  late  thousands  of  emigrants  had 
been  setting  forth  from  Missouri  with  the  boast  that  they  would 
secure  and  hold  the  country  for  the  United  States.  Twice  Eng 
land  had  proposed  a  division  of  the  region ;  but  the  plan  had  been 
rejected  by  our  government. 

In  the  spring  of  1844,  Clay  and  Van  Buren  were  the 
leading  candidates  for  the  Whig  and  Democratic  nominations 


492  SLAVERY  AND  EXPANSION 

for  the  presidency.  On  April  20  they  each  gave  out  a  public 
letter  on  political  issues,  and  both  advised  against  agita- 
Thecam-  ^on  ^OT  expansion.  The  country  exclaimed  that 
paignof  the  two  leaders  were  trying  in  secret  conjunction 
to  say  what  the  people  should  not  do.  The 
Whigs,  with  some  hesitation,  submitted,  and  nominated  Clay. 
The  Democrats  revolted.  Three  Southern  States  that  had 
instructed  delegates  for  Van  Buren  called  new  conventions 
and  revoked  the  instructions.  The  Democratic  National 
Convention  nominated  James  K.  Polk,  and  the  platform  de 
clared  for  "the  ^occupation  of  Oregon  and  the  ^annexation 
of  Texas."  In  the  Northwest,  Democratic  stump  orators  at 
once  added  the  slogan  "Fifty -four  forty  or  fight."  This  war 
cry  was  sounded  jubilantly  in  every  Democratic  meeting  in 
the  campaign.  Some  Western  leaders  did  not  hesitate  to 
promise  that  their  party  would  also  get  Calif  ornia  and  Canada 
for  the  United  States,  and  hinted  even  at  Mexico  and 
Central  America. 

The  political  Abolitionists,  under  the  name  of  the  Liberty 
party,  nominated  Birney,  and  drew  enough  antislavery 
Texas  votes  from  the  Whigs  in  New  York  to  give  that 

annexed  close  State,  and  the  election,  to  Polk.  Tyler  and 
Congress  accepted  this  result  as  a  verdict  for  annexation ; 
and  on  the  last  day  of  the  old  administration  a  "joint 
resolution"  of  the  two  Houses  of  Congress  made  Texas  one 
of  the  States  of  the  Union  (March  3,  1845).  Texas,  how 
ever,  never  consented  to  be  divided,  and  so  the  Slave 
Power  gained  less  in  the  Senate  than  it  had  planned. 

Polk's  inaugural  indicated  the  intention  to  take  all  of 
Oregon,  even  at  the  cost  of  war  with  England.  Such  Western 
The  Oregon  supporters  as  Stephen  A.  Douglas  of  Illinois  and 
compromise  Lewis  Cass  of  Michigan  seemed  ready  for  that 
result.  Calhoun  and  other  Southern  leaders,  however,  feared 
that  war  with  England  might  end  in  loss  of  Texas  ;  Webster, 
powerful  in  the  Senate,  stood  for  compromise,  as  did  also 
some  enthusiastic  Western  expansionists  like  Benton ; 
England  renewed  her  sensible  offer  to  divide  Oregon,  by 
extending  the  boundary  line  of  the  49th  parallel  (already 


WAR  WITH  MEXICO  493 

adopted  east  of  the  mountains)  through  the  disputed  district 
to  the  Pacific  ;  and  a  treaty  to  this  effect  was  ratified  by  our 
Senate.  The  dividing  line  was  practically  identical  with 
the  Northern  watershed  of  the  Columbia ;  and  it  gave  us 
all  that  we  could  claim  on  the  basis  of  "occupation,"  leaving 
to  England  that  half  of  the  district  which  Englishmen  had 
"occupied."  The  Northwest,  however,  complained  bitterly 
that  its  interests  had  been  betrayed  by  the  President,  and 
that  he  had  surrendered  to  England's  power  in  order  the 
better  to  prey  on  Mexico's  weakness. 

Polk  wanted  California  also,  to  which  we  had  no  claim 
whatever.     He  tried  to  buy,  but  could  not  bully  Mexico 
into  selling  the  coveted  district.     But  other  means  war  with 
remained.  Mexico 

Texas  extended  without  question  to  the  Nueces  River. 
Not  content  with  that  southern  boundary,  she  claimed  to 
the  Rio  Grande  —  on  grounds  at  least  questionable.  For 
the  United  States  to  back  up  this  claim  was  to  make  war 
with  Mexico  certain.  General  Zachary  Taylor,  in  command 
of  American  troops  in  Texas,  was  ordered  to  move  to  the 
Rio  Grande,  where  his  position  threatened  a  Mexican  city 
across  the  river.  The  Mexicans  demanded  a  withdrawal. 
Taylor  refused,  was  attacked,  won  a  victory,  and  crossed 
the  river.  Polk  announced  to  •  Congress  (May  11,  1846), 
"War  exists,  and,  notwithstanding  all  our  efforts  to  avoid  it, 
exists  by  the  act  of  Mexico  !"  Congress  accepted  the  pre 
text  and  adopted  the  war. 

Abolitionists  again  talked  secession.  But,  outside  New 
England,  the  unjust  war  was  popular.  It  was  waged  bril 
liantly.  General  Taylor  invaded  from  the  north,  and  Gen 
eral  Winfield  Scott  advanced  from  the  Gulf.  The  Mexicans 
were  both  brave  and  subtle  ;  but  American  armies  won  amaz 
ing  victories  over  larger  entrenched  forces,  and  the  contest 
closed  with  the  spectacular  storming  of  the  fortified  heights 
of  Chapultepec  and  the  capture  of  the  City  of  Mexico 
(September  15,  1847). 

At  the  outbreak  of  the  war  American  troops  had  been 
dispatched  to  seize  California  and  New  Mexico  (territory 


494  SLAVERY  AND  EXPANSION 

which  included,  besides  the  modern  States  of  those  names, 
most  of  the  present  Arizona,  Nevada,  Utah,  and  parts  of 
Gains  of  Colorado  and  Wyoming) .  In  the  treaty  of  peace, 
territory  after  ceding  Texas  as  far  as  the  Rio  Grande,  Mexico 
was  forced  to  accept  $15,000,000  for  this  other  territory. 
Members  of  the  President's  Cabinet  wanted  to  take  all  of 
Mexico ;  Buchanan,  Secretary  of  State,  publicly  declared, 
"Destiny  beckons  us  to  hold  and  civilize  Mexico"  ;  and  the 
press  boasted  confidently  that  the  American  flag  in  the  City 
of  Mexico  would  never  be  hauled  down.  But  Polk  wisely 
insisted  upon  a  more  moderate  policy,  and  took  (and  paid 
for)  only  what  he  had  offered  to  buy  before  he  began  the 
war.  (Cf.  map  after  page  370.) 

A  misunderstanding  soon  arose  as  to  some  forty-five 
thousand  square  miles  of  the  "Mexican  cession,"  just  south 
The  of  the  Gila ;  and  Mexico  threatened  to  fight  again 

Gadsden  rather  than  surrender  her  claim.  Finally,  in  1853, 
the  United  States  secured  full  title  by  paying  ten 
million  dollars  more,  through  our  agent,  Gadsden.  This 
Gadsden  Purchase  was  the  last  expansion  of  our  territory 
before  the  overthrow  of  slavery ;  but  it  was  not  the  last 
attempt  by  the  Slave  Power.  Southern  politicians  had  long 
looked  with  covetous  desire  at  Cuba.  Polk  offered  Spain  a 
hundred  million  dollars  for  the  island,  but  was  refused.  Then 
about  1854,  Southern  leaders  were  ready  for  a  more  extreme 
program,  and  began  frankly  to  advocate  the  seizure  of  Cuba 
Reaching  by  force.  This  piratical  doctrine  was  set  forth  with 
for  Cuba  particular  emphasis  in  that  year  in  the  famous 
Ostend  Manifesto,  a  document  published  in  Europe  by  a 
group  of  leading  American  diplomatic  representatives  there, 
with  James  Buchanan  among  them.  When  Buchanan 
became  President  (1857),  he  renewed  the  attempts  to  buy 
Cuba  and  to  secure  slave  territory  in  Central  America. 
These  sinister  efforts  ceased  only  when  the  Civil  War  began. 

And  unscrupulous  and  violent  as  this  policy  was,  it  had  a 
backing  in  popular  sentiment  that  was  not  wholly  base,  as 
was  illustrated  in  1851  by  the  Lopez  "filibusters,"  five 
hundred  strong,  who  sailed  from  New  Orleans  to  invade 


THE  OSTEND  MANIFESTO  495 

Cuba.  Whatever  the  motives  of  the  statesmen  at  Wash 
ington,  the  filibusters  themselves  and  the  Southern  people 
back  of  them  were  impelled  largely  by  the  ancient  land 
hunger  and  spirit  of  conquest  and  adventure  which  had 
brought  their  ancestors  to  Virginia  and  had  sent  their 
brothers  to  Texas. 


CHAPTER  XXX 

THE   STRUGGLE  TO   CONTROL  THE  NEW  TERRITORY 

Population  increased  in  the  decade  1840-1850  from  sev 
enteen  to  twenty -three  millions.  Immigration  from  Europe 
The  Slave  now  took  on  large  proportions.  Until  1845,  no 
Power's  one  vear  had  brought  100,000  immigrants  (page 
?heeene°4  394).  That  year  brought  114,000 ;  1847  (during 
territory  tne  Irish  famine)  brought  235,000;  and  1849 
(after  the  European  "year  of  revolution"  l)  brought  almost 
300,000.  This  tremendous  current,  once  started,  continued 
unabated  to  the  Civil  War.  It  still  came  almost  wholly 
from  the  northern  European  countries,  and  was  composed 
mainly  of  sturdy  laboring  men,  who  naturally  avoided  the 
South  with  its  slave  labor. 

Florida  became  a  State  in  1845  ;  but  Slavery's  gain  in  the 
Senate  through  the  addition  of  that  State  and  of  Texas  was 
balanced  by  the  admission  of  Iowa  (1846)  and  Wisconsin 
(1848).  In  the  lower  House  of  Congress  the  free  States  had 
nearly  a  half  more  members  than  the  Slave  States.  This 
situation  gave  especial  importance  to  the  question  whether 
slavery  or  freedom  should  control  the  new  territory  acquired 
from  Mexico.  All  that  territory,  except  Texas,  had  been 
"free"  territory  under  Mexican  law.  But  in  the  North 
west  were  looming  up  a  band  of  future  "free"  common 
wealths,  from  Minnesota  to  Oregon,  while  outside  this 
Mexican  cession  there  was  no  chance  for  more  Slave  States. 

As  soon  as  war  began,  the  President  had  asked  Congress 
for  a  grant  of  two  million  dollars  to  enable  him  to  negotiate 
The  wiimot  to  advantage.  It  was  understood  that  this  money 
Proviso  was  £O  be  used  as  a  flrst  payment  in  satisfying 
Mexico  for  territory  to  be  taken  from  her.  To  this  "Two- 

1  The  German  fugitives,  after  the  failure  of  their  gallant  attempt  at  revolution, 
made  a  notable  addition  to  the  forces  of  Liberty  in  America.  Among  them  were 
Carl  Schurz  and  Franz  Sigel. 

496 


SQUATTER  SOVEREIGNTY  497 

Million  Dollar  Bill"  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  David 
Wilmot,  a  Pennsylvania  Democrat,  secured  an  amendment 
providing  that  slavery  should  never  exist  in  any  territory 
(outside  Texas)  to  be  so  acquired.  Northwestern  Democrats 
voted  almost  solidly  for  this  "Wilmot  Proviso,"  partly  from 
real  reluctance  to  see  slavery  extended,  partly  to  punish  Polk 
and  the  Slave  Power  for  "betraying"  the  Northwest  in  the 
Oregon  matter. 

The  session  expired  (August,  1846)  before  a  vote  was 
reached  in  the  Senate.  In  the  next  session  the  Proviso  again 
passed  the  lower  House,  but  was  voted  down 
in  the  Senate,  where  the  Slave  Power  had  now  doctrine: 
rallied.  Then  (February,  1848)  Calhoun  pre- 
sented  the  Southern  program  in  a  set  of  resolu 
tions  affirming  that,  since  the  territories  were  the  common 
domain  of  all  the  States,  Congress  had  no  constitutional 
power  to  forbid  the  people  of  any  part  of  the  Union, 
with  their  property,  from  seeking  homes  in  that  domain. 
This  meant,  of  course,  the  right  of  Southerners  to  carry 
their  slaves  —  and  slave  law  —  into  any  "  Territory."  Then, 
said  the  South,  when  the  time  for  Statehood  arrives,  let  the 
inhabitants  of  each  Territory  decide  the  matter  of  slavery 
or  freedom  for  themselves. 

This  was  the  doctrine  to  be  known  later  as  "squatter  sov 
ereignty"  or  "popular  sovereignty."  It  appealed  shrewdly 
to  a  liking  for  fair  play,  in  claiming  that  the  South  "simply 
asked  not  to  be  denied  equal  rights  ...  in  the  common 
public  domain."  Even  more  powerfully  it  appealed  to  the 
democratic  instincts  of  the  West,  claiming  merely  to  turn 
the  whole  question  over  to  the  people  most  interested  — 
although,  as  Abraham  Lincoln  was  soon  to  point  out,  it 
failed  to  consult  the  slaves  —  the  people  most  interested. 

Some  Northern  congressmen  now  deserted  the  Wilmot 
Proviso  in  favor  of  "non-intervention  by  Congress,"  while 
others  favored  extending  the  old  line  of  the  The  election 
Missouri  Compromise  to  the  Pacific.  Finally,  °fl848 
the  country  went  into  the  presidential  election  of  1848  with 
out  having  settled  any  civil  government  for  the  vast  area 


498  SLAVERY  OR  FREEDOM 

recently  acquired.  This  neglect  was  serious.  New  Mexico 
and  California  were  seats  of  ancient  Spanish  settlement  at 
such  centers  as  Santa  Fe  and  the  various  Missions  near  San 
Francisco ;  and  the  sensitive  and  highly  civilized  popula 
tion  resented  military  government  by  the  American  con 
querors.  Moreover,  in  January,  1848,  just  before  the 
cession  by  Mexico,  gold  was  discovered  in  California  at 
Sutter's  Fort  (now  Sacramento).  Then  followed  a  vast  and 
varied  immigration,  which  needed  imperatively  a  settled 
government. 

The  Whigs,  who  had  won  their  one  success  with  General 
Harrison,  now  repeated  their  tactics  of  1840.  They  adopted 
no  platform  whatever,  and  nominated  Zachary  Taylor, 
of  Louisiana,  a  slaveholder,  a  straightforward  soldier,  and 
the  hero  of  the  war.  The  Democratic  platform  evaded  all 
mention  of  slavery  and  of  the  burning  Territorial  ques 
tion  ;  but  the  presidential  candidate  was  Lewis  Cass  of 
Michigan,  the  originator  of  the  "popular  sovereignty"  plan 
for  Territories. 

The  antislavery  Democrats  had  hoped  to  nominate  Van 
Buren,  who  for  a  time  had  the  strongest  vote  in  the  Con 
vention.1  An  antislavery  faction  of  New  York  Democrats 
("Barnburners"  2)  finally  seceded  from  the  Convention  and 
did  place  Van  Buren  in  nomination.  A  few  weeks  later,  he 
was  nominated  also  by  a  new  Free  Soil  party,  which  had 
absorbed  the  Liberty  party.  The  Free  Soilers  recognized 
frankly  that  Congress  could  not  interfere  with  slavery  in  the 
States,  but  they  insisted  on  its  prohibition  in  the  Territories, 
with  the  cry,  "Free  Speech,  Free  Labor,  Free  Soil,  and  Free 
Men."  They  cast  300,000  votes  (five  times  as  many  as  the 
Liberty  party  four  years  before).  In  most  of  the  country, 

1  Democratic  National  Conventions  long  used  a  "two-thirds  rule,"  in  making 
nominations.     Other  parties  nominated  by  a  majority  vote. 

2  This  name,  derived  from  a  campaign  story  of  a  Dutchman  who  burned  his  barn 
to  get  rid  of  the  rats,  was  applied  in  derision,  because  the  faction  avowed  a  willing 
ness  to  ruin  its  party  rather  than  permit  slavery  in  the  Territories.     The  "regular" 
faction  of  the  Democratic  party  in  New  York  became  known  as  Old  Hunkers.     Party 
epithets  were  growing  bitter.     Cass  and  other  Northern  men  who  showed  subser 
viency  to  the  Slave  Power  were  coming  to  be  derided  as  "  Doughfaces." 


SQUATTER  SOVEREIGNTY  499 

they  drew  mainly  from  the  Whigs ;  but  in  New  York  their 
Barnburner  allies  drew  from  Cass  just  enough  to  give  that 
State  (and  the  election)  to  the  Whigs. 

Meantime,  California,  lacking  even  a  Territorial  govern 
ment,  grew  to  the  stature  of  Statehood.  Thousands  of 
"Forty-niners,"  from  all  quarters  of  the  globe  (but  California 
mainly  from  the  Northern  States  of  the  Union) ,  and  the 
rushed  to  the  rich  gold  fields :  some  around  Cape  Vlgilant 
Horn  by  ship  ;  some  by  way  of  the  Isthmus ;  but  more  by 
wagon  train  across  the  Plains,  defying  Indians  and  the  more 
terrible  Desert,  along  trails  marked  chiefly  by  the  bleach 
ing  skeletons  of  their  forerunners.  And  on  the  Pacific  coast 
itself,  whenever  rurnor  reported  that  some  prospector  had 
"struck  it  rich,"  distant  camps  and  towns  were  depopulated 
to  swell  the  roaring  new  settlement,  —  toward  which,  over 
mountain  paths,  streamed  multitudes  of  reckless  men,  laden 
with  spade,  pickax,  and  camp  utensils.  In  a  few  months, 
the  mining  region  contained  some  eighty  thousand  adven 
turers.  To  maintain  rude  order  and  restrain  rampant  crime, 
the  better  spirits  among  the  settlers  adopted  regulations 
and  organized  Vigilance  Committees  to  enforce  them,  with 
power  of  life  and  death. 

On  taking  office,  President  Taylor  at  once  advised  New 
Mexico  and  California  to  organize  their  own  State  govern 
ments  and  apply  for  admission  to  the  Union.  The  Cali- 
fornians  acted  promptly  on  this  suggestion,  and  (November, 
1849)  a  convention  unanimously  adopted  a  "free  State" 
constitution.  Taylor  sought  to  keep  faith,  and  urged  Con 
gress  to  admit  the  new  State.  The  Slave  Power  raged  at 
seeing  the  richest  fruits  of  the  Mexican  War  slipping  from  its 
grasp.  The  country  was  aflame.  Every  Northern  legis 
lature  but  one  passed  resolutions  declaring  that  Congress 
ought  to  shut  out  slavery  from  all  the  new  territory.  In 
the  South,  public  meetings  and  legislatures  urged  secession 
if  such  action  were  taken.  Said  Toombs  of  Georgia  in 
Congress,  "I  .  .  .  avow  ...  in  the  presence  of  the  living 
God,  that  if  ...  you  seek  to  drive  us  from  California,  .  .  . 
I  am  for  disunion." 


500 


SLAVERY  OR  FREEDOM 


Taylor  died  suddenly  in  July,  1850,  to  be  succeeded  by 
Fillmore  from  the  vice-presidency.  This  gave  a  breathing 
spell,  and  Clay  came  forward  once  more  with  a 
compromise,  aiming  to  reconcile  the  South  to  the 
^OSS  °^  California  by  giving  them  their  will  on 
other  disputed  points.  Proud  of  his  title  of  "the 
Great  Pacificator,"  he  pled  for  "a  union  of  hearts"  between 


f 

"  Compro- 
°f 


TEST  VOTE 

ON  THE 

COMPROMISE  OF  1850 

IN  THE 

HOUSE  OF  REPRESENTATIVES 
(September  6,  1850) 

•I 


North  and  South  through  mutual  concession :  otherwise, 
he  feared  there  was  little  chance  for  the  survival  of  the  polit 
ical  Union  which  he  loved. 


THE  LAST  COMPROMISE,  IN  1850  501 

Clay's  "Omnibus"  measures  were  supported  by  the  new 
President,  and  finally  passed  in  separate  bills  after  a  stren 
uous  eight  months'  debate.  They  provided  for :  (1)  the 
admission  of  the  "free"  California;  (2)  Territorial  organ 
ization  of  New  Mexico  and  Utah  on  "squatter-sovereignty" 
principles ;  (3)  prohibition  of  the  slave  trade  in  the  District  of 
Columbia ;  and  (4)  a  new  and  more  effective  Fugitive  Slave 
Law,  with  all  the  abominations  of  the  old  one.  This  was  the 
"Compromise  of  1850"  -the  last  compromise  on  slavery. 
Many  Southern  Representatives  voted  No,  in  order  that 
the  measure,  if  passed,  should  be  passed  by  Northern  votes. 

It  was  Webster  who  really  secured  the  passage  of  the  com 
promise.  He  had  bitterly  opposed  the  annexation  of  Texas 
and  the  war ;  but  now  he  urged  that  the  North 

,  '.  0         .  Webster's 

owed  concession  to  the  weaker  South.  More-  «« seventh 
over,  slave  labor,  he  was  sure,  could  never  be  of  March" 
profitable  in  sterile  New  Mexico.  It  was  al 
ready  excluded  "by  the  law  of  nature."  He  "would 
not  take  pains  to  reenact  the  will  of  God."  To-day  the 
historical  student  is  inclined  to  say  that  this  "Seventh  of 
March"  speech  was  dictated  by  deep  love  for  the  Union. 
Webster  never  had  been  optimistic  in  temperament.  Now 
an  old  man,  he  did  not  venture  to  hope  that  there  could 
ever  be  a  better  Union,  while  he  even  began  to  despair  of 
the  existing  one  unless  the  South  was  pacified.  At  the 
moment,  however,  the  antislavery  men  of  the  North  felt 
that  he  played  a  traitor's  part  to  the  cause  of  liberty,  in 
order  to  secure  Southern  support  for  the  presidency.  The 
finest  expression  of  this  antislavery  wrath  is  in  the  stern 
condemnation  of  Whittier's  Ichabod :  — 

"From  those  great  eyes 

The  soul  has  fled. 

When  faith  is  lost,  when  honor  dies, 
The  man  is  dead. 

"Then,  pay  the  reverence  of  old  days 

To  his  dead  fame. 
Walk  backward,  with  averted  gaze, 
And  hide  the  shame." 


502  SLAVERY  OR  FREEDOM 

And  Emerson  wrote  with  barbed  insight:  "Mr.  Webster, 
perhaps,  is  only  following  the  laws  of  his  blood  and  con 
stitution.  .  .  .  He  is  a  man  who  lives  by  his  memory :  a 
man  of  the  past ;  not  a  man  of  faith  and  hope.  All  the  drops 
of  his  blood  have  eyes  that  look  downward.9'  And  says  Rhodes 
(History,  I,  153)  of  Webster's  advocacy  of  the  Fugitive  Slave 
Law:  "Webster  could  see  'an  ordinance  of  nature'  and 
'the  will  of  God'  written  on  the  mountains  and  plateaus  of 
New  Mexico ;  but  he  failed  to  see  ...  the  will  of  God  im 
planted  in  the  hearts  of  freemen." 

Calhoun,  dying  and  despairing,  opposed  the  compromise 
as  insufficient.  If  the  North  wished  to  preserve  the  Union, 
Caihoun's  ne  urged?  ^  must  concede  some  kind  of  political 
dissatis-  equilibrium  between  itself  and  the  weaker  South. 

His  papers  show  that  he  meant  to  propose  an 
amendment  to  the  Constitution  providing  for  two  Presidents, 
one  from  each  section,  with  a  mutual  veto.  But  like  his 
great  rivals,  Clay  and  Webster,  he  passed  from  political  life 
in  this  debate. 

More  .significant  than  the  attitude  of  these  statesmen 
of  a  passing  day  was  the  appearance  of  a  new  group  of 
Seward's  antislavery  men,  led  by  William  H.  Seward  of 
"  Higher  New  York.  Like  Calhoun,  Seward  opposed  the 

compromise,  but  for  opposite  reasons.  He  in 
sisted  that  peace  between  the  sections  could  come  only 
with  the  extinction  of  slavery.  As  to  the  Territories,  said 
he:  "The  Constitution  devotes  the  Domain  to  ...  liberty. 
.  .  .  But  there  is  a  higher  law  than  the  Constitution, 
which  devotes  it  to  the  same  noble  purpose."  For  the 
moment,  Webster  and  Clay  prevailed.  But  the  "Higher- 
Law"  speech  was  to  exert  more  lasting  influence  than  the 
speech  of  "the  Seventh  of  March." 


CHAPTER  XXXI 

THE   BREAKDOWN    OF   COMPROMISE 

IT  has  been  fitly  said  that  the  Union  was  maintained 
from  1789  to  1820  by  the  compromises  in  the  Constitution,  and 
from  1820  to  1861  by  Congressional  compromises. 

r>   1-4- •      11       J  J^u  £    Au  TheFugitive 

Political  leaders  and  the  mass  01  the  people  were  slave  law 
desperately  anxious  to  convince  themselves  that 
the  Compromise  of  1850  was  final.  Any  further 
discussion  of  slavery  was  severely  reprobated  by  many 
Northern  men.  But,  exclaimed  James  Russell  Lowell, 
"To  tell  us  that  we  ought  not  to  agitate  the  question 
of  slavery,  when  it  is  that  which  is  forever  agitating  us, 
is  like  telling  a  man  with  the  ague  to  stop  shaking  and 
he  will  be  cured."  The  Fugitive  Slave  law  kept  men  think 
ing,^  about  slavery.  That  law  was  the  great  mistake  of 
the  Slave  Power.  Had  the  South  been  content  to  lose  the 
few  slaves  who  escaped  into  free  States,1  the  compromise 
might  have  endured  years  longer.  In  his  "Higher  Law" 
speech,  Seward  had  warned  the  South:  "You  are  entitled 
to  no  more  stringent  laws,  and  such  laws  would  be  useless. 
The  cause  of  the  inefficiency  of  the  present  statute  is  not 
at  all  the  leniency  of  its  provisions  :  it  is  the  public  sentiment 
of  the  North.  .  .  .  Your  Constitution  and  laws  convert 
hospitality  to  the  refugee  .  .  .  into  a  crime ;  but  all  mankind 
except  you  esteem  that  hospitality  a  virtue."  And  Emerson 
called  the  law  "a  law  which  every  one  of  you  will  break  on 
the  earliest  occasion  —  a  law  which  no  man  can  obey,  or 
abet,  without  loss  of  self-respect  and  forfeiture  of  the  name 
of  gentleman." 

The  law  could  be  applied  to  Negroes  who  had  been  living 
for  years  in  the  North  in  supposed  safety  —  since  the  break- 

1  From  1830  to  1860  the  number  averaged  not  more  than  1000  a  year.  A  small 
insurance  would  have  protected  the  owners. 

503 


504  SLAVERY  OR  FREEDOM 

down  of  the  law  of  1793.  Thousands  now  abandoned 
their  homes  for  hurried  flight  to  Canada ;  and  some  were 
actually  seized  by  slave  hunters.  More  attempts  to  re 
capture  fugitive  slaves  took  place  in  1851  than  in  all  our 


PROCLAMATION ! ! 

TO  ALL 

THE  GOOD  PEOPLE  OF  MASSACHUSETTS! 

Be  it  known  that  there  are  now 
THREE  SLAVE-HUNTERS  OR  KIDNAPPERS 

IN  BOSTON 

Looking  for  their  prey.    One  of  them  is  called 
"DAVIS." 

He  is  an  unusually  ill-looking  fellow,  about  five  feet  eight  inches  high, 
wide-shouldered.  He  has  a  big  mouth,  black  hair,  and  a  good  deal  of  dirty 
bushy  hair  on  the  lower  part  of  his  face.  He  has  a  Roman  nose ;  one  of  his 
eyes  has  been  knocked  out.  He  looks  h'ke  a  Pirate,  and  knows  how  to  be 
a  Stealer  of  Men. 

The  next  is  called 
EDWARD  BARRETT, 

He  is  about  five  feet  six  inches  high,  thin  and  lank,  is  apparently  about 
thirty  years  old.  His  nose  turns  up  a  little.  He  has  a  long  mouth,  long 
thin  ears,  and  dark  eyes.  His  hair  is  dark,  and  he  has  a  bunch  of  fur  on 
his  chin.  ...  He  wears  his  shirt  collar  turned  down,  and  has  a.  black 
string  —  not  of  hemp  —  about  his  neck. 

The  third  ruffian  is  named 
ROBERT  M.  BACON,  alias  JOHN  D.  BACON. 

He  is  about  fifty  years  old,  five  feet  and  a  half  high.  He  has  a  red, 
intemperate-looking  face,  and  a  retreating  forehead.  His  hair  is  dark,  and 
a  little  gray.  He  wears  a  black  coat,  mixed  pants,  and  a  purplish  vest.  He 
looks  sleepy,  and  yet  malicious. 

Given  at  Boston,  this  4th  day  of  April,  in  the  year  of  our  Lord,  1851,  and 
of  the  Independence  of  the  United  States  the  eighty-fourth. 

God  save  the  Commonwealth  of  Massachusetts  ! 


AN  ANTISLAVERY  HANDBILL  or  1851,  parodying  advertisements  for  escaped  slaves. 

From  Rhodes,  I,  212. 

history  before.     But  now  every  seizure  caused  a  tumult  — 
Personal-      if  not  a  riot.     Even    "proslavery"    men    in    the 
liberty  laws    North  could  not  stand  for  the  hunting  of  slaves 
at  their  own  doors.     Legislatures  refused  to  United  States 


COMPROMISE  BREAKS  DOWN  505 

officials  the  use  of  State  jails,  forbade  State  officers  to  aid 
in  executing  the  law,  and  enacted  various  "personal-liberty 
laws"  to  secure  to  any  man  seized  as  an  escaped  slave  those 
rights  of  jury  trial  and  legal  privilege  which  the  Federal  law 
denied  him.  Some  of  these  State  laws  amounted  to  down 
right  Nullification.1  The  "Underground  Railroad"2  was 
extended.  In  several  cases,  fugitives  were  rescued  from  the 
officers  in  full  day  by  "mobs"  of  such  high-minded  gentle 
men  as  Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson,  Samuel  J.  May,  and 
Gerrit  Smith.  These  men  sometimes  avowed  their  deed  in 
the  public  press,  and  challenged  prosecution ;  and  all  at 
tempts  to  punish  broke  down,  because  no  jury  would  convict. 
When  a  slave  was  returned,  the  recapture  usually  proved  to 
have  cost  the  master  more  than  the  man  could  be  sold  for. 
Still,  in  the  campaign  of  1852,  the  platforms  of  both  the 
leading  parties  indorsed  the  "Compromise"  emphatically,3 
with  express  reference  also  to  the  Fugitive  Slave  The  election 
provision  ;  and  when  Charles  Sumner  in  the  Senate  of  1852 
moved  the  repeal  of  that  law,  he  found  only  three  votes  to 
support  him.  In  the  presidential  election,  too,  the  Free 
Soil  vote  ("Free  Democracy,"  now)  fell  off  a  half;  and 
General  Scott,  the  Whig  candidate,  who  was  believed  to  be 
more  liberal  than  his  platform,  was  easily  defeated  by 
Franklin  Pierce,  who  gave  the  Compromise  his  hearty 
support. 

One  feature  of  the  election  of  1852  was  the  prominence  of 
a  new  political  party  which  called  itself  the  American  party, 

1  The  Wisconsin  legislative  resolutions  of  1859  used  the  words  of  the  old  Ken 
tucky  Resolutions  of  1799. 

2  An  arrangement  among  Abolitionists  in  the  Border  States  for  concealing  fugi 
tives  and  forwarding  them  to  Canada.     The  system  had  its  " stations,"  "  junctions," 
"conductors,"  and  so  on. 

3  The  tendency  among  respectable  classes  at  the  North  to  cling  to  the  Com 
promise  was  especially  notable  in  the  Eastern  colleges,  —  where  there  were  many 
students  from  the  South.     Andrew  D.  White  says  that  in  the  Yale  of  the  early 
fifties  (when  he  was  a  student  there),  "the  great  majority  of  older  professors  spoke 
at  public  meetings  in  favor  of  proslavery  compromises,"  though,  "except  for  a  few 
theological  doctrinaires,"  their  personal  sympathies  were  against  slavery.     The  two 
great  Yale  professors  of  the  day  who  opposed  the  Fugitive  Slave  law,  he  adds,  were 
generally  condemned  for  "  hurting  Yale,"  and  driving  away  Southern  students. 


506  SLAVERY  OR  FREEDOM 

but  which  is  better  known  by  the  appellation  of  Know- 
nothings.  From  the  time  of  the  Philadelphia  Convention, 
The  Know-  bitter  attempts  had  been  made  now  and  again  to 
nothings  limit  the  political  influence  of  foreign  immigrants. 
To  this  "native"  prejudice  there  was  added,  after  the  Irish 
immigration  of  the  late  forties,  a  silly  fear  of  "Catholic" 
domination.  The  new  party  was  a  secret  society,  with  in 
tricate  ramifications  and  elaborate  hierarchy.  Its  purpose 
was  to  exclude  from  office  all  but  native-born  and  all  not  in 
sympathy  with  this  program  ;  but  members  below  the  high 
est  grade  of  officials  were  pledged  to  passive  obedience  to 
orders,  and  were  instructed,  when  questioned  as  to  party 
secrets,  to  reply,  "I  know  nothing."  The  movement  was 
bigoted  in  character  and  un-American  in  methods;  but  it 
gained  considerable  strength  in  eastern  and  southern  States, 
and  elected  several  congressmen.  In  part,  the  movement 
drew  its  strength  from  the  desire  to  ignore  slavery  and  find 
new  issues. 

What  slim  chance  there  was  that  the  North  might  quiet 
down  under  the  iniquity  of  the  Fugitive  Slave  law  was 

now  finally  dissipated  by  another  audacious  meas- 
Nebraska  ure  in  the  interests  of  slavery.  The  vast  region 
18541853  from  Missouri  and  Iowa  to  the  Rockies  was 

known  as  the  Platte  country.  Immigrants  to 
California  were  pouring  across  it ;  and  at  the  assembling  of 
Congress  in  December,  1853,  Stephen  A.  Douglas  of  Illinois, 
chairman  of  the  Senate  Committee  on  Territories,  strove 
to  secure  a  Territorial  organization  for  the  region.  But 
his  Kansas-Nebraska  bill  proposed  that  two  new  Terri 
tories  there  should  be  placed  on  the  squatter-sovereignty 
basis  as  to  slavery. 

Douglas  and  President  Pierce  put  forward  the  surprising 
claim  that  the  Compromise  of  1850  implied  this  form  of 
Repeals  the  organization  for  all  Territories  thereafter  formed. 
Compromise  But  this  district  was  part  of  the  Old  Louisiana 

Purchase,  solemnly  guaranteed  to  freedom  by  the 
Compromise  of  1820.  The  Compromise  of  1850  had  ap- 


COMPROMISE  BREAKS  DOWN 


507 


508  SLAVERY  OR  FREEDOM 

plied  only  to  territory  just  acquired  from  Mexico :  no  one 
had  dreamed  then  that  it  was  to  repeal  the  Missouri  Com 
promise  for  old  territory.  The  Southern  congressmen  had 
not  asked  such  a  thing;  but  now,  after  a  gasp  of  aston 
ishment,  they  seized  their  chance. 

Most  Northerners  looked  upon  the  move  as  a  wanton 
violation  of  a  sacred  pledge ;  but  the  bill  carried  by  a  close 
vote,  —  in  the  House,  113  to  100.  Douglas  tried  to  make 
the  bill  a  party  measure ;  but  it  ended  as  a  sectional  meas 
ure.  Half  the  Northern  Democrats  voted  against  it  — 
though  all  the  President's  power  of  patronage  was  used  to 
whip  them  into  line  —  and  the  other  half,  almost  to  a  man, 
lost  their  seats  at  the  next  election.  All  Southern  congress 
men  but  nine,  Whigs  or  Democrats,  voted  for  it. 

Now  the  struggle  for  "  Bleeding  Kansas  "  was  transferred 
to  the  country  at  large.  From  Missouri  thousands  of  armed 
"  Bleeding  slave-owners  poured  across  the  line  to  preempt 
Kansas "  land  —  which,  however,  few  of  them  made  any 
pretense  of  really  settling.  From  the  North,  especially 
from  distant  New  England,  came  thousands  of  true  settlers, 
financed  often  by  the  "Emigrant  Aid  Society,"  and 
armed  with  the  new  breech-loading  Sharpens  rifle,  to 
save  Kansas  for  freedom.  In  like  fashion,  far-off  Georgia 
sent  her  contingent  of  the  "Sons  of  the  South"  reli 
giously  dedicated  to  the  cause  of  slavery.  But  once 
more  slavery  proved  its  weakness.  In  spite  of  the  neigh 
borhood  of  slave  territory,  it  was  not  easy  to  move 
slave  plantations  to  a  new  State,  especially  to  one  not 
particularly  adapted  to  slave  labor ;  and  the  free-State 
settlers  soon  predominated  in  numbers. 

The  first  Territorial  legislature  was  carried  by  "Border 
Ruffians"  from  across  the  Missouri  line.  A  preliminary 
"census"  had  shown  only  2905  voters  in  the  Territory.  On 
the  evening  before  the  election  day,  "an  unkempt,  sun- 
dried,  blatant,  picturesque  mob  of  five  thousand  Missourians, 
with  guns  on  their  shoulders,  revolvers  stuffing  their  belts, 
bowie  knives  protruding  from  their  boot-tops,  and  generous 
rations  of  whisky  in  their  wagons,"  drove  madly  across  the 


BLEEDING  KANSAS  509 

border,  seized  all  but  one  of  the  polling  places,  and  swamped 
the  "free-State"  vote.  The  proslavery  legislature,  so 
elected,  unseated  the  few  "free-State"  members,  and 
passed  stringent  laws  to  protect  slavery.  The  free-State 
settlers  tried  to  disregard  this  fraudulent  government 
(January,  1856),  and  it  was  denounced  also  by  the  honest 
and  fearless  governor,  Andrew  H.  Reeder,  who  had  been 
appointed  as  a  strong  proslavery  man.  But  President 
Pierce  removed  Reeder  and  supported  the  proslavery 
legislature  with  United  States  troops.  Actual  war  followed 
in  Kansas  between  rival  proslavery  and  free-State  "govern 
ments,"  and  bloody  murders  were  committed  both  by  raiders 
from  Missouri  and  by  free-State  fanatics  like  John  Brown.1 

In  the  debate  on  the  Nebraska  bill,  Sumner  had  declared 
that  it  "annuls  all  past  compromises,  and  makes  future  com 
promises  impossible.  It  puts  freedom  and  slavery  face  to 
face,  and  bids  them  grapple."  And  said  Emerson :  "  The 
Fugitive  law  did  much  to  unglue  the  eyes;  and  now  the  Ne 
braska  bill  leaves  us  staring." 

That  rash  measure  had  coalized  the  discordant  antislavery 
elements  throughout  the  country  into  one  political  party. 
"Anti-Nebraska  men"  (Free  Soilers,  Northern  Birth  of  the 
Whigs,  Northern  Democrats  opposed  to  Douglas'  Republican 
measure)  drew  together  under  the  name  Republican. 
This  party  took  from  the  Free  Soilers  the  program  of  pro 
hibiting  slavery  in  all  "Territories."  It  adopted  from  the 
Whigs,  who  rallied  to  it  in  large  numbers,  their  broad- 
construction  views.  And  it  recognized  its  Democratic  ele 
ment  by  nominating  as  its  first  candidate  for  President  a 
young  officer  belonging  to  that  party,  John  C.  Fremont. 
The  name  Republican  was  designed  to  indicate  the  purpose 
of  going  back  to  the  true  democracy  of  Jefferson's  original 
"Republican"  party. 

The  first  Republican  National  Convention   (1856)   con- 

1  Brown  was  quite  ready  to  take  life,  or  to  give  his  own,  in  fighting  "the  sum 
of  all  villanies,"  but  he  must  not  be  confounded  with  "ordinary  criminals."  His 
killings  represented  a  blind  revolt  of  the  moral  sense  against  an  unrighteous  system. 
They  were  somewhat  similar  to  the  crimes  by  maddened  enthusiasts  in  the  cause  of 
social  reform. 


510  SLAVERY  OR  FREEDOM 

tained  representatives  from  all  the  free  States  and  from 
Maryland,  Delaware,  and  Kentucky.  The  platform  asserted 
that  under  the  Constitution  neither  Congress  nor  any 
Territorial  legislature  had  authority  to  establish  slavery  in 
a  Territory,  urged  a  railway  across  the  continent,  and 
pledged  liberal  aid  to  commerce  by  river  and  harbor  im 
provement.  Despite  the  sweeping  statement  regarding 
slavery  in  the  Territories,  the  party,  down  to  the  War, 
affirmed  steadfastly  that  Congress  had  no  right  to  interfere 
with  the  institution  in  the  States;  and  its  leaders  reviled 
Abolitionists  almost  as  violently  as  the  Southerners  did. 

In  the  election,  Fremont  carried  all  the  Northern  States 
but  four.  The  Know-nothings  carried  Maryland.  The 
The  election  Democrats  elected  their  candidate,  James  Buchanan, 
of  1856  ty  17£  electoral  votes  to  114.  The  Republicans, 
however,  in  this  first  contest,  mustered  1,300,000  votes,  to 
1,800,000  for  the  Democrats. 

And  then  (March,  1857)  came  the  Dred  Scott  decision,  in 
which  the  Supreme  Court  declared  that  both  North  and 
The  Dred  South  were  trying  to  stand  upon  unconstitutional 
Scott  ground  —  with  a  difference.  Dred  Scott  was  the 

slave  of  an  army  officer.  In  1834  his  owner  had 
taken  him  to  an  army  post  in  Illinois,  and,  later,  to  one  in 
what  is  now  Minnesota  ;  and  then  back  to  Missouri.  Slavery 
could  not  legally  exist  in  Illinois,  because  of  the  Northwest 
Ordinance,  or  in  Minnesota,  because  of  the  Missouri  Com 
promise  ;  and,  some  years  later,  Scott  sued  for  his  freedom 
on  the  ground  that  he  became  free  legally  when  he  resided 
in  that  free  territory. 

The  case  finally  reached  the  Supreme  Court.  That 
august  body  held  that  Scott  was  still  a  slave  and  had  no 
Affirms  that  stanc^mS  m  court ;  1  and  two  thirds  of  the  Court 2 
slavery  concurred  in  the  further  and  uncalled-for  opinion 
follows  the  Of  tne  chief  Justice  (Roger  B.  Taney)  that  neither 
Congress  nor  Territorial  legislature  could  legally 
forbid  slavery  in  a  Territory.  The  Constitution,  said  the 

1  Scott  was  at  once  freed  by  his  owner. 

2  Justices  Curtis  and  McLean  presented  powerful  dissenting  opinions. 


REPUBLICANS  DEFY  THE  COURT        511 

Court,  sanctioned  property  in  slaves,  and  every  citizen  of 
the  Union  must  have  his  property  protected  in  any  part  of 
the  common  national  domain.  Only  a  State  could  abolish 
slavery. 

This  was  a  sweeping  adoption  of  Calhoun's  contention, 
and  the  precise  reverse  of  Republican  doctrine.  According 
to  this  dictum,  the  restriction  upon  slavery  in  the  Missouri 
Compromise  had  always  been  void  in  law, -even  before  re 
pealed  by  the  Nebraska  Act.  Quite  as  clearly,  the  opinion 
denied  the  "popular  sovereignty"  idea.  But  in  exchange 
for  this  ground  which  it  was  told  to  surrender,  the  South 
was  offered  still  more  advanced  and  impregnable  pro- 
slavery  ground,  while  the  Republican  party  was  branded  as 
seeking  an  end  wholly  unconstitutional  and  illegitimate 
by  any  means.  It  must  surrender,  or  defy  the  Court - 
"that  part  of  our  government  on  which  all  the  rest  hinges." 

Without  hesitation,  the  Republican  leaders  defied  the 
Court.  Said  Seward  in  the  Senate:  "The  Supreme  Court 
attempts  to  command  the  people  of  the  United  The  „  Court 
States  to  accept  the  principle  that  one  man  can  of  last 
own  other  men ;  and  that  they  must  guarantee  r 
the  inviolability  of  that  false  and  pernicious  property.  The 
people  .  .  .  never  can,  and  they  never  will,  accept  prin 
ciples  so  unconstitutional  and  abhorrent.  .  .  .  We  shall 
reorganize  the  Court,  and  thus  reform  its  political  senti 
ments  and  practices,  and  bring  them  into  harmony  with 
the  Constitution  and  the  laws  of  nature."  Lincoln,  in 
public  debate,  even  accused  the  Court  of  entering  into  a 
plot  with  Pierce,  Douglas,  and  Buchanan.  Other  North 
erners  foresaw  Civil  War.  James  Russell  Lowell,  on  hear 
ing  of  the  Court's  decision,  wrote  to  Charles  Eliot  Norton, 
in  Italy:  "I  think  it  will  do  good.  It  makes  slavery 
national,  as  far  as  the  Supreme  Court  can.  So  now  the 
lists  are  open,  and  we  shall  soon  see  where  the  stouter  lance 
shafts  are  grown,  North  or  South."  More  temperately,  but 
quite  as  decidedly,  the  influential  Springfield  Republican 
said :  "In  this  country,  the  court  of  last  resort  is  the  people. 
They  will  discuss  and  review  the  action  of  the  Supreme 


512  SLAVERY  OR  FREEDOM 

Court,  and,  if  it  presents  itself  as  a  practical  issue,  they  will 
vote  against  it" 

The  congressional  elections  of  the  next  year  showed 
great  Republican  gains.  The  campaign  was  made  famous 
The  ky  a  series  of  joint,  debates  in  Illinois  between 

Lincoln-  Douglas  (the  "Little  Giant")  and  Abraham  Lin- 
Dougias  coin,  candidates  for  the  Senate.  Lincoln  was 
defeated,  but  he  attained  his  deliberate  purpose. 
His  acute  and  persistent  questions  forced  Douglas  to 
choose  between  the  new  doctrine  of  the  Supreme  Court 
-  to  which  the  South  now  clung  vociferously  —  and  his 
own  old  doctrine  of  squatter  sovereignty  —  which  was 
certainly  as  far  as  Illinois  would  go.  If  he  placed  him 
self  in  opposition  to  the  Supreme  Court,  he  would  not  be 
able  to  secure  Southern  support  for  the  presidency  at  the 
next  election,  to  which  men's  eyes  were  already  turned. 
If  he  did  not  oppose  the  Court,  he  would  lose  the  Senator- 
ship  and  Northern  support  for  the  presidency.  In  any 
case,  the  Slavery  party  would  be  robbed  of  its  most  for 
midable  candidate  in  1860.  Douglas  was  driven  to  maintain 
that,  despite  the  Dred  Scott  decision,  a  Territorial  legislature 
could  keep  out  slavery  by  "unfriendly  legislation."  This 
doctrine  was  at  once  denounced  bitterly  by  the  South. 

Even  more  significant  was  the  moral  stand  taken  by 
Lincoln.  The  real  issue,  he  declared,  was  the  right  or  wrong 
of  slavery,  —  not  any  constitutional  theory :  "It  is  the 
eternal  struggle  between  these  two  principles  —  right  and 
wrong  —  throughout  the  world.  They  are  the  two  principles 
which  have  stood  face  to  face  from  the  beginning  of  time, 
and  which  will  ever  continue  to  struggle.  The  one  is  the 
common  right  of  humanity  :  the  other  is  the  divine  right 
of  kings.  [Slavery]  is  the  spirit  that  says,  *  You  work  and 
toil  and  earn  bread,  and  I'll  eat  it.'  No  matter  in  what 
shape  it  comes,  it  is  the  same  tyrannical  principle." 

In  1857  the  free-State  men  won  the  Kansas  elections  so 
overwhelmingly  that  the  proslavery  organization  could  no 
longer  expect  open  support  from  Washington.  The  ex- 


GAINS  FOR  FREEDOM  513 

piring  proslavery  legislature,  however,  still  provided  for  a 
proslavery  convention,  which  met  at  Lecompton  (Novem 
ber,  1857).  President  Buchanan  had  purchased  The  Federal 
for  that  body  the  privilege  of  meeting  in  peace  government 

i  •   •          ,  i      ,    • ,  11        111  i        • .  .     i    supports  the 

by  promising  that  its  work  should  be  submitted  slave  Power 
to  popular  vote.  This  pledge  was  not  kept.  The  in  Kansas 
convention  arranged  a  "constitution  with  slavery"  and  a 
"constitution  with  no  slavery,"  which  last,  however,  left  in 
bondage  the  slaves  then  in  the  Territory,  and  forbade  the 
residence  of  free  Negroes.  At  the  promised  election,  the 
voters  were  permitted  merely  to  choose  between  these  two 
constitutions:  they  were  given  no  opportunity  to  reject 
both. 

The  free-State  men  kept  away  from  the  polls;  and  the 
"constitution  with  slavery"  carried  overwhelmingly,  six 
thousand  to  less  than  six  hundred.  But  the  new  free-State 
legislature  provided  for  a  new  and  proper  expression  of 
opinion.  This  time  the  proslavery  men  abstained  from 
voting ;  and  the  two  constitutions  together  received  less 
than  two  hundred  votes,  to  more  than  ten  thousand  against 
both  of  them.  Still,  the  South  and  the  Administration  at 
Washington  strove  violently  to  secure  the  admission  of  the 
State  with  the  "Lecompton  constitution,"  claiming  the 
first  election  as  valid. 

This  nefarious  attempt  to  rob  the  people  of  their  will  was 
defeated  by  the  warm  opposition  of  Douglas,  who  remained 
true  to  his  doctrine  of  popular  sovereignty.  The  Slave 
Power  succeeded,  however,  in  getting  Congress  to  submit 
the  Lecompton  constitution  for  the  third  time  to  the  people 
of  Kansas,  with  a  bribe  of  public  lands  if  they  would  accept 
it.  Kansas  refused  the  bribe,  11,000  to  2000.  Even  then 
the  Democratic  Senate  would  not  admit  the  State  with  its 
"free"  constitution,  and  Kansas  statehood  had  to  wait  till 
1861.  Meantime,  two  other  free  States  came  in,  to 
establish  Northern  supremacy  in  the  Senate,  —  Minnesota 
(1858)  and  Oregon  (1859). 

In  one  other  vital  matter  at  this  same  time  the  Slave  Power 
offended  the  moral  sense  and  threatened  the  material  interest 


514  SLAVERY  OR  FREEDOM 

of  "free"  labor.  As  early  as  1845,  Andrew  Johnson  of 
Tennessee  (page  437)  introduced  in  Congress  the  first 

"Homestead  Mtt"  -to  give  every  homeless  citizen 
vetoes'thc  a  farm  from  the  public  lands.  Several  times 
Homestead  sucn  bills  passed  the  House.  But  larger  free 

immigration  into  the  public  domain  would  end  all 
chance  to  set  up  slavery  there ;  and  the  Slave  Power, 
formerly  favorable  to  a  liberal  land  policy,  now  defeated 
all  these  bills  in  the  Senate.  This  new  attitude  of  the  Slave 
Power  helped  to  make  the  masses  of  the  North  see  the 
fundamental  opposition  between  free  and  slave  labor.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  antislavery  parties  appealed  to  Northern 
workingmen  by  their  position  on  this  matter.  The  Free 
Soilers  declared  in  their  platform  of  1852,  in  full  accord  with 
the  labor  parties  of  twenty  years  before :  - 

''The  public  land  of  the  United  States  belongs  to  the  people,  and 
should  not  be  sold  to  individuals  or  granted  to  corporations,  but 
should  be  held  as  a  sacred  trust  for  the  benefit  of  the  people,  and 
should  be  granted  in  limited  quantities,  free  of  cost,  to  landless 
settlers." 

In  June  of  1860  the  House  again  passed  a  Homestead  bill 
giving  any  head  of  a  family  a  quarter  section  after  five 
years'  residence  thereon.  The  Republican  platform  of  the 
same  year  "demanded"  the  passing  by  the  Senate  of  that 
"complete  and  satisfactory  measure,"  protesting  also 
"against  any  view  of  the  free  homestead  policy  which 
regards  the  settlers  as  paupers  or  suppliants  for  public 
bounty."  This  time  the  Senate  did  pass  the  bill,  but  Bu 
chanan  vetoed  it.  "The  honest  poor  man,"  argued  the  Presi 
dent  with  gracious  rhetoric,  "by  frugality  and  industry 
can  in  any  part  of  our  country  acquire  a  competency.  .  .  . 
He  desires  no  charity.  .  .  .  This  bill  will  go  far  to  de 
moralize  the  people  and  repress  this  noble  spirit  of  independ 
ence.  It  may  introduce  among  us  those  pernicious  social 
theories  which  have  proved  so  disastrous  in  other  countries." 
When  the  Slave  Power  withdrew  from  Congress,  a  Home 
stead  bill  at  last  became  law  —  in  May,  1862. 


JOHN  BROWN  515 

Two  other  events  must  be  noticed,  before  we  take  up  the 
fateful  election  of  1860. 

1.  In  1859  John  Brown  tried  to  arouse  a  slave  insurrection 
in  Virginia.     He  seems  hardly  to  have  comprehended  the 
hideous  results  that  would  have  followed  a  sue-  john 
cessful  attempt.     He  planned  to  establish  a  camp  Brown's 

in  the  mountains  to  which  Negro  fugitives  might  msurrection 
rally ;  and  his  little  force  of  twenty -two  men  seized  the 
arsenal  at  Harpers  Ferry,  to  get  arms  for  slave  recruits. 
The  neighboring  slaves  did  not  rise,  as  he  had  hoped  they 
would,  and  he  was  captured  after  a  gallant  defense.  Vir 
ginia  gave  him  a  fair  trial ;  and  he  was  convicted  of  murder 
and  of  treason  against  that  commonwealth.  His  death 
made  him  more  formidable  to  slavery  than  ever  he  had 
been  living.  The  North  in  general  condemned  his  action ; 
but  its  condemnation  was  tempered  by  a  note  of  sympathy 
and  admiration  ominous  to  Southern  ears.  Emerson  de 
clared  that  Brown's  execution  made  "the  scaffold  glorious 
-  like  the  Cross." 

2.  In    1852    Mrs.    Harriet   Beecher   Stowe   had    written 
Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,  one  of  the  greatest  moral  forces  ever 
contained  between  book  covers.     The  volume  un-  Uncle 
doubtedly    misrepresented    slavery,  —  as    though  Tom's 
exceptional  incidents  had  been  the  rule ;   but  it 

did  its  great  work  in  making  the  people  of  the  North  realize 
that  the  slave  was  a  fellow  man  for  whom  any  slavery  was 
hateful.  The  tremendous  influence  of  the  book,  however, 
was  not  really  felt  for  some  years.  The  boys  of  fourteen 
who  read  it  in  1852  were  just  ready  to  give  their  vote  to 
Abraham  Lincoln  in  1860.  This  explains,  too,  in  part,  why 
the  college  youth  who  had  been  generally  proslavery  in 
1850  left  college  halls  vacant  in  1861  to  join  the  Northern 
armies. 


CHAPTER  XXXII 

ON   THE  EVE   OF  THE  FINAL   STRUGGLE 
AMERICA   IN    1860 

To  most  men  of  the  time  these  years  1845-1860  had  a 
more  engrossing  aspect  than  was  afforded  by  the  slavery 
Rapid  struggle.  The  era  was  one  of  wonderful  material 

growth  of  prosperity.  Wealth  increased  fourfold,  —  for  the 
first  time  in  our  history  faster  than  population. 
Men  were  absorbed  in  a  mad  race  to  seize  the  new  oppor 
tunities.  They  had  to  stop,  in  some  degree,  for  the  slavery 
discussion ;  but  the  majority  looked  upon  that  as  an  annoy 
ing  interruption  to  the  real  business  of  life. 

Between  1850  and  1857,  railway  mileage  multiplied  enor 
mously ;  and  in  the  North  the  map  took  on  its  modern 
Railway  gridiron  look.  Lines  reached  the  Mississippi  at 
mileage  ^en  points;  and  some  projected  themselves  into 
the  unsettled  plains  beyond.  With  the  railway,  or  ahead 
of  it,  spread  the  telegraph.  Mail  routes,  too,  took  advantage 
of  rail  transportation ;  and  in  1850  postage  was  lowered 
from  5  cents  for  300  miles  to  3  cents  for  3000  miles.  With 
cheap  and  swift  transportation  and  communication,  the  era 
of  commercial  combinations  began,  and  great  fortunes  piled 
up  beyond  all  previous  dreams.  The  new  money  kings, 
railway  barons,  and  merchant  princes  of  the  North,  it  was 
noted,  joined  hands  with  the  great  planters  of  the  South  in 
trying  to  stifle  opposition  to  slavery  —  because  all  such 
agitation  "hurt  business." 

For  labor,  too,  the  period  was  a  golden  age.  Between  1840 
and  1860,  wages  rose  twenty  per  cent,  and  prices  only  two 
Labor  per  cent.  Pauperism  was  unobtrusive,  and,  to 

prosperous  foreign  observers,  amazingly  rare.  Inventions 
had  multiplied  comforts  and  luxuries.  Pianos  from  Ger- 

516 


RAILROAD  CONSTRUCTION 
From  1830  to  1860 


INDUSTRIES  AND  TRADE  517 

many  were  seen  in  Western  villages,  and  French  silks 
sometimes  found  their  way  to  the  counter  of  a  cross-roads 
store.  Western  farmers  moved  from  their  old  log  cabins 
into  two-story  frame  houses,  painted  white,  with  green 
blinds.  That  same  rather  bare  sort  of  building  was  the 
common  "town"  house  also  in  the  West  —  varied,  however, 
by  an  occasional  more  pretentious  and  often  more  ugly 
"mansion"  of  brick  or  stone.  Artistic  domestic  architec 
ture  did  not  appear  until  about  1900. 

New  England  and  New  York  had  learned  the  lesson  of 
conservative  banking;  but  in  the  West  most  banks  were 
still  managed  recklessly.  In  ^857,  accordingly,  came  an 
other  "panic,"  due,  like  that  of  1837,  to  speculation,  wild 
inflation  of  credit,  and  premature  investment  of  borrowed 
capital  in  enterprises  that  could  give  no  immediate  return. 
This  time,  however,  the  country  recovered  quickly. 

The  twenty  years  preceding  the  Civil  War  saw  an  indus 
trial  transformation  due  to  the  development  of  farm  machinery 
One  farm  laborer  in  1860  could  produce  more  than  Deveiop- 
three  in  1840.     Until  1850,  the  dominant  agricul-  mentof 
tural  interest  of  the  United  States  had  been  the  cSnery*" 
cotton   and  tobacco,  _of   the    South.     After  that  and  its 
date,  it  became  thej/rain  of  the  Northwest.     For  r 
that    section,    McCormick's    reaper    worked    a    revolution 
akin  to  that  worked  for  the  South  a  half -century  earlier  by 
Whitnev_j  cotton  gin. 

Until  1850,  too,  the  more  distant  parts  of  the  West,  — 
Wisconsin,  Iowa,  Minnesota,  Nebraska,  southern  Illinois, 
-  had  remained  tributary  commercially  to  New  Orleans, 
by  the  river.  Now  this  Northwest  suddenly  changed  front. 
Farm  machinery  and  the  railway  made  it  possible  for  it  to 
feed  the  growing  Eastern  cities  and  even  to  export  the 
surplus  to  Europe  from  Eastern  ports.  And  this  change  in 
trade  routes  was  more  than  economic.  It  completed  the! 
break  in  the  old  political  alliance  of  South  and  West  — j 
already  begun  by  the  moral  awakening  on  slavery  —  and 
foreshadowed  a  new  political  alliance  of  East  and  West. 
The  merit  of  the  Compromise  of  1850  in  our  history  is  that 


518 


AMERICA  IN   1860 


it  put  off  the  war  until  this  alliance  was  cemented  and  the 
Northwest  was,  body  and  soul,  on  the  side  of  the  Union. 

In  yet  another  way  the  improved  reapers  and  threshers  may 
be  said  to  have  won  the  Civil  War.  Without  such  machinery, 
Northern  grain  fields  could  never  have  spared  the  men  who 
marched  with  Grant  and  Sherman.  As  it  was,  with  half  its 
men  under  arms,  the  Northwest  increased  its  farm  output. 


HARVESTING  IN  1831.  McOormick's  first  successful  horse-reaper — the  first  im 
provement  upon  the  cradle  scythe.  The  "  self-binder "  was  a  later  feature. 
From  a  photograph  based  upon  a  "reconstruction"  by  the  International  Har 
vester  Company. 

The  acquisition  of  California  had  been  followed  by  a 
swift  expansion  of  trade  with  Asia.  Hawaii  had  been 
Trade  with  brought  under  American  influence  previously  by 
the  Orient  American  missionaries  and  traders ;  and  in  1844 
China  was  persuaded  to  open  up  five  "treaty  ports"  to 
American  trade,  Japan  continued  to  exclude  foreigners 
until  ISM,  when  Commodore  Perry,  in  pursuance  of  orders 
from  Washington,  entered  Japanese  ports  with  his  fleet  of 
warships  and  secured  a  commercial  treaty. 


INDUSTRIES  AND  TRADE 


519 


After  the  discovery  of  gold  in  California  (and  with  the 
opening  of  these  prospects  of  Oriental  trade)  the  question  of 
transportation    across    the    Isthmus    of    Panama  The  clay_ 
arose.     Great  Britain  and  the  United  States  each  ton-Buiwer 
tried  to  secure  routes  for  a  canal  from  ocean  to  treaty 
ocean ;   but  in  1850  the  Clayton-Bulwer  treaty  agreed  that 
any  canal  across  those  narrow  lands  should  be  neutral,  and 


HARVESTING  TO-DAY.  A  Mogul  Kerosene  Tractor  pulling  two  McCormick  reapers 
and  binders  with  mechanical  shockers.  The  tractor  is  managed  by  the  man 
on  the  front  reaper.  Two  men  take  the  place  of  six  human  beings  in  the  previous 
cut  and  do  many  times  as  much  work,  in  much  greater  comfort.  This,  of  course, 
is  a  development  much  later  than  the  Civil  War. 

subject  to  common  control  by  the  two  countries.     In  1855  a 
railway  was  opened  across  the  Isthmus. 

The  ambitious  project  of  an  American  railway  from  the 
Mississippi  to  the  Pacific  was  agitated  constantly  after 
1850;  and  in  1861,  encouraged  by  prospects  .of  a  govern 
ment  subsidy,  the  Western  Union  carried  a  telegraph  line 
across  the  mountains  to  San  Francisco.  Travel  from  St. 
Louis  to  San  Francisco,  by  relays  of  armed  stage  coaches, 
took  four  weeks ;  but  mail  was  carried  in  ten  days  by  the 
daring  riders  of  the  "Pony  Express." 


520  AMERICA  IN  1860 

Population  had  continued  to  increase  at  about  the  old 
rate  of  100  per  cent  in  twenty -five  years,  besides  the  added 
Population  volume  of  immigration  in  the  fifties.  Between 
and  the  1850  and  1860  our  numbers  had  risen  from 
sections  twenty-three  million  to  thirty-one  and  a  half; 
and  the  cities  (eight  thousand  people  and  upwards)  counted 
now  158.  This  was  four  times  as  many  as  twenty  years 
earlier ;  and  the  cities  now  contained  one  man  in  every  six 
of  the  entire  population,  instead  of  one  in  twelve,  as  in 
1840,  or  one  in  twenty,  as  in  1800. 

The  cities  of  1860  were  still  large  towns  gone  to  seed  from 
rapid  growth.  They  were  unplanned,  ugly,  filthy,  poorly 
The  itie«=  Ponced  ;  and  the  larger  ones  were  run  by  corrupt 
"rings"  of  politicians,  who  maintained  their 
power  by  unblushing  fraud.  New  York  introduced  a  uni 
formed  and  disciplined  "Metropolitan  police"  just  before 
the  War;  and  the  invention  of  the  steam  fire  engine,  in 
1853,  promised  somewhat  better  protection  against  the 
common  devastating  fires. 

The  North  contained  nineteen  million  of  the  thirty-one 
and  a  half  million  people  of  the  Union,  a  ratio  of  19  to  12 ; 
strength  anc^  °^  ^ne  twelve  and  a  half  million  in  the 
of  North  South,  four  million  were  slaves.  Moreover,  when 
and  South  .^  war  jjne  wa§  gnai}y  drawn?  four  slave-holding 

States  (Maryland,  Delaware,  Kentucky,  and  Missouri)  re 
mained  with  the  North.  These  States  contained  a  fourth 
of  the  "Southern"  population;  and  the  recruits  which 
these  divided  districts  sent  to  the  South  were  about  offset 
by  recruits  to  the  North  from  "West"  Virginia  and  Eastern 
Tennessee.  Thus,  for  totals,  secession  was  to  be  supported 
by  less  than  five  and  a  half  million  Whites  (with  three  and 
a  half  million  slaves)  against  more  than  twenty-two  million 
for  the  Union.  The  area  of  Secession  contained  one  White 
man  of  military  age  to  four  in  the  North.  The  North  had 
three  fourths  the  railway  mileage  and  six  sevenths  of  the 
cities  of  the  Union. 

The  South  too  was  less  able  to  feed  and  clothe  armies.  She 
furnished  seven  eighths  of  the  world's  raw  cotton ;  but  she 


NORTH  AND  SOUTH  521 

did  not  raise  her  own  full  supply  of  food,  and  manufactures 
were  almost  totally  lacking.  Minerals  and  water  power 
were  abundant,  but  unused.  Said  a  Charleston  paper  to 
its  people:  "Whence  come  your  axes,  hoes,  scythes?  Yes, 
even  your  plows,  harrows,  rakes,  ax  and  auger  handles  ? 
Your  furniture,  carpets,  calicoes,  and  muslins  ?  The  cradle 
that  rocks  your  infant,  the  top  your  boy  spins,  the  doll 
your  girl  caresses,  the  clothes  your  children  wear,  the  books 
from  which  they  are  educated  ...  all  are  imported  into 
South  Carolina."  "The  North,"  says  Rhodes,  "combined 
the  resources  of  farm,  shop,  and  factory ;  the  South  was  but 
a  farm"  —and  a  farm  which  received  from  outside  much 
of  its  bread  and  meat. 

Even  so,  only  half  as  much  of  the  land  was  cultivated 
South  as  North.  The  value  of  Southern  farm  land,  too,  was 
less  than  that  of  similar  land  in  the  North,  while  the  value 
of  farm  machinery  to  each  cultivated  acre  was  not  half  that 
in  the  North.  Slaves  could  not  be  trusted  with  machinery. 

That  the  difference  was  due  not  to  climate,  but  to  labor, 
is  clear  from  the  fact  that  it  showed  instantly  upon  crossing 
a  State  line.  In  1796  George  Washington  noted  the  higher 
prices  of  land  in  Pennsylvania  than  in  Maryland  "though 
not  of  superior  quality";  and  added  his  opinion,  on  that 
ground,  that  Virginia  must  follow  Pennsylvania's  example 
of  emancipation  "at  a  period  not  far  remote."  Tocqueville 
noted  the  contrast  between  the  north  and  south  banks  of  the 
Ohio:  thinly  scattered  population,  with  occasional  gangs 
of  indolent  slaves  in  the  few,  "  half -desert "  fields,  as  over 
against  "the  busy  hum  of  industry  .  .  .  fields  rich  with 
harvest  .  .  .  comfortable  homes  .  .  .  prosperity  on  all 
sides."  In  1859  Frederick  Law  Olmsted  made  a  journey 
through  the  Southern  States ;  and  his  acute  observations 
(summed  up  in  his  Cotton  Kingdom)  show  that  the  indus 
trial  retardation  of  the  South  had  been  steadily  increasing 
up  to  the  final  catastrophe. 

In  other  respects,  also,  slavery  was  avenged  upon  the 
masters.  The  poorer  Whites  were  degraded  by  it,  and  the 


522  AMERICA  IN   1860 

slave-owning  class  were  unduly  passionate,  imperious,  and 
willful. 

The  9,000,000  Whites  of  the  slaveholding  States  composed 
some  1,800,000  families.  One  fifth  of  these  owned  slaves; 
The  South-  but  only  eight  or  ten  thousand  families  owned 
em  ans-  more  than  fifty  apiece.  This  small  aristocracy 
had  a  peculiar  charm  —  if  only  the  ugly  substruc 
ture  could  be  forgotten.  The  men  were  leisured  and  culti 
vated,  with  a  natural  gift  for  leadership  and  a  high  sense  of 
public  duty.  They  were  courageous,  honorable,  generous, 
with  easy  bearing  and  a  chivalrous  courtesy.  Visitors  from 
the  Old  World  complained  that  Northern  men  were  ab 
sorbed  in  business  cares  and  lacking  in  ease  of  manner; 
but  they  were  always  charmed  by  the  aristocratic  manners 
and  cultivated  taste  of  the  gentry  of  the  South. 

It  must  be  added,  however,  not  only  that  the  great  body 
of  small  slave-owners  were  destitute  of  this  charm,  but  that 
they  were  often  uneducated.  The  South  produced  little 
literature  of  a  high  order  (except  political  speeches)  and 
little  art;  and  it  had  few  schools.  On  the  other  hand, 
Southern  politics  had  absolutely  no  taint  of  that  corruption 
which  had  appeared  in  the  North. 

Man  for  man,  in  marching  and  fighting,  the  Southerner 
was  far  more  than  a  match  for  the  man  of  the  North,  - 
especially  for  the  man  of  the  Eastern  cities.  Southern 
outdoor  life  and  familiarity  with  firearms  counted  for  much 
in  the  early  campaigns  of  the  war.  The  North  had  been 
sadly  deficient  in  athletics  and  in  wholesome  living,  and 
was  at  its  lowest  ebb  in  physical  condition.  (Emerson 
ate  "  pie "  for  breakfast  regularly !)  The  agricultural 
population  of  the  West,  however,  resembled  the  South  in 
physical  characteristics ;  and  the  men  of  the  North,  city  or 
country,  had  a  mechanical  ability,  useful  in  repairing  or 
building  bridges  or  engines,  which  was  less  apparent  in  the 
armies  of  the  South. 


THE  POLITICAL  STRUGGLE  523 

THE   LAST   POLITICAL  STRUGGLE   FOR  SUPREMACY 

In  April,  1860,  the  Democratic  National  Convention  met 
at    Charleston,    amid    tense    excitement    over    the    whole 
country.     Douglas  men  had  a  majority,  but  not  TheDemo 
the  necessary  two  thirds.     The  Southern  extrem-  Cratic  Con° 
ists  insisted  on  a  platform  affirming  the  duty  of  ventions 
Congress  to  defend  slavery  in  all  Territories  and 
condemning  Douglas'  doctrine  of  possible  "unfriendly  legis 
lation"  as  unconstitutional.     The  Douglas  men  voted  this 
down.     Then  the  Southern  delegates  withdrew.     After  ten 
days  of  fruitless  negotiation  with  that  seceding  faction,  the 
Convention    adjourned,    to    meet    at    Baltimore    in    June. 
There  the  Moderates  nominated  Douglas.     The   seceders 
then  placed  in  nomination  John  C.  Breckinridge  of    Ken 
tucky  upon  their  extreme  platform. 

Meantime,  conservative  representatives  of  the  old  Whig 
and  Know-nothing  parties  organized  as  the  Constitutional 
Union  party  ;  and  their  Convention  (May  9)  nom-  The  "  Union 
inated  John  Bell  of  Tennessee,  announcing  the  Party" 
compromise  platform,  "No  constitutional  principles  except 
the  Constitution  of  the  country,  the  Union  of  the  States,  and 
the  enforcement  of  the  laws."  This  party  received  support 
from  the  great  moneyed  interests  of  the  North  and  from 
many  of  the  large  planters  of  the  South. 

A  week  later,  the  Republican  Convention  met  at  Chicago 
in  a  vast  "wigwam,"  amid  wild  enthusiasm  from  Repubiicans 
thousands  of  spectators.     At  first  Seward  was  the  nominate 
leading    candidate;   but    he  had    many    personal  Lmcoln 
enemies,  and  the  third  ballot  nominated  Abraham  Lincoln. 

Most  New  England  Republicans  were  deeply  grieved. 
They  believed  that,  in  passing  by  Seward,  principle  had 
been  sacrificed  to  a  mistaken  idea  of  expediency ;  and  they 
looked  upon  Lincoln  as  not  only  obscure,  but  ignorant, 
uncouth,  and  incapable.  Most  of  his  support,  indeed, 
came  from  men  who  regarded  him  as  "available"  rather 
than  particularly  desirable.  Almost  no  one  of  prominence 
yet  dreamed  of  the  wise,  patient,  steadfast,  far-seeing 


524  AMERICA  IN  1860 

man,  of  homely  grandeur,  that  the  next  years  were  to 
reveal. 

With  the  Democratic  party  hopelessly  divided,  Repub 
lican  victory  in  the  electoral  college  was  almost  certain.  To  the 
South,  that  prospect  was  alarming.  The  Republican  plat 
form  had  once  more  reasserted  that  Congress  had  no  power 
to  interfere  with  slavery  in  the  States  ;  but  in  the  1858  debate 
with  Douglas,  Lincoln  had  said  boldly  and  sagaciously : 
"A  house  divided  against  itself  cannot  stand.'  I  believe 
this  government  cannot  endure  permanently  half  slave  and 
half  free.  I  do  not  expect  the  house  to  fall ;  but  I  expect 
it  will  cease  to  be  divided.  It  will  become  all  one  thing  or 
all  the  other."  The  South  saw  that  this  speech  was  the 
real  platform,  —  to  which  the  Republican  party  would 
have  to  come.  Republican  success  would  mean  eventually 
a  reversal  of  the  Supreme  Court  and  continued  progress 
toward  Lincoln's  "nation  all  free,"  if  the  nation  held 
together  at  all. 

The  South  did  not  shrink.  Deliberately,  in  advance,  it 
made  preparations  to  break  up  the  Union  and  save  slavery. 
"  A  HOUS<  North  and  South  no  longer  understood  each  other, 
divided  In  the  seventy  years  since  the  adoption  of  the 
against  Constitution,  the  North  had  moved  steadily  toward 
new  intellectual  and  moral  standards  and  a  new 
system  of  industry:  the Sauth  had  remained  stagnant.  As 
a  Southern  writer  said  :  "  The  whirl  and  rush  of  progress  en 
compassed  the  South  on  every  side.  .  .  .  Yet  alone  in  all 
the  world  she  stood  unmoved  by  it."  The  North  had 
adopted  the  new  Websterian  views  of  the  Constitution,  in 
accord  with  modern  needs  :  the  South  clung  to  the  old,  out 
grown  views  expressed  by  Calhoun.  The  great  Protestant 
denominations — Baptists,  Methodists,  Presbyterians  —  had 
already  split  apart  into  distinct  churches,  North  and  South, 
on  the  slavery  issue.  Southern  associations  were  forming, 
pledged  to  import  manufactures  from  England  rather  than 
from  the  North.  The  North  condemned  the  South  as  a 
community  built  upon  a  great  sin :  the  South  despised  and 
reviled  the  North  as  a  race  of  "mudsills"  and  cheats,  and 


A  HOUSE  DIVIDED  525 

boasted  its  own  higher  sense  of  honesty  and  honor.  Unity 
was  already  gone  in  hearts,  in  industry,  in  religious  organ 
izations.  It  was  going  in  commercial  intercourse.  It  could 
not  long  endure,  on  such  terms,  in  government. 

Lincoln  carried  every  Northern  State  (including  Cali 
fornia)  except  for  three  of  the  seven  New  Jersey  electors. 
Douglas  received  only  those  three  votes  and  the  Lincoln's 
nine  from  Missouri,  though  his  popular  vote  was  election 
nearly  as  large  as  Lincoln's.  Bell  carried  the  moderate 
Border  States,  Virginia,  Kentucky,  and  Tennessee.  All  the 
other  Southern  States  went  to  Breckinridge.  Lincoln  had 
180  electoral  votes  to  123  for  his  three  competitors  com 
bined  ;  but  in  the  popular  vote,  he  had  only  1,857,610  out 
of  a  total  of  4,645,380.  The  victory  was  narrow;  and  it 
was  the  victory  of  a  divided  section  over  a  weaker  but 
more  united  section. 


PAET  X  — NATIONALISM  VIOTOKIOUS,   1860-1876 
CHAPTER  XXXIII 

THE   CALL   TO   ARMS 

NOVEMBER  10,  four  days  after  Lincoln's  election,  the 
legislature  of  South  Carolina  appropriated  money  for  arms, 
Secession  an(^  called  a  State  convention  to  act  on  the  question 
of  seven  of  secession.  All  over  the  State,  Palmetto  ban 
ners  unfurled  and  "liberty  poles"  rose.  Decem 
ber  17,  the  convention  met.  Three  days  later,  it  unani 
mously  "repealed"  the  ratification  of  the  Federal  Constitu 
tion  by  the  State  convention  of  1788,  and  declared  that 
"the  State  of  South  Carolina  has  resumed  her  place  among 
the  nations  of  the  world."  By  February  1,  like  action  had 
been  taken  in  Georgia  and  the  five  Gulf  States  —  the  entire 
southern  tier  of  States. 

Northern  writers  long  charged  that  the  Southern  leaders 
carried  secession  as  a  "conspiracy,"  and  that  they  were 
A  popular  afraid  to  refer  the  matter  to  a  direct  vote.  This  is 
movement  absolutely  wrong.  Public  opinion  forced  Jeffer 
son  Davis  onward  faster  than  he  liked;  and  the  mass  of 
small  farmers  were  more  ardent  than  the  aristocracy  — 
whose  large  property  interests  tended,  perhaps,  to  keep 
them  conservative.  For  more  than  a  year,  in  the  less  aristo 
cratic  counties,  popular  conventions,  local  meetings,  and 
newspapers  had  been  threatening  secession  if  a  President 
unfriendly  to  the  Dred  Scott  decision  should  be  elected ; 
and  when  even  the  "Fire-eater"  Toombs  paused  at  the  last 
moment  to  contemplate  compromise,  his  constituents 
talked  indignantly  of  presenting  him  with  a  tin  sword. 
The  South  was  vastly  more  united  in  1861  than  the  colonies 
were  in  1776.  The  leaders  acted  through  conventions,  not 

526 


THE  SOUTHERN  CONFEDERACY        527 

because  they  feared  a  popular  vote,  but  because  their  politi 
cal  methods  had  remained  unchanged  for  seventy  years  and 
because  they  thought  it  seemly  for  their  States  to  secede 
by  the  same  machinery  by  which  they  had  originally 
"  acceded  "  to  the  Union. 

Few  Southerners  questioned  the  right  of  a  "sovereign 
State  "  to  secede.  The  sole  difference  of  opinion  was  whether 
sufficient  provocation  existed  to  make  such  action  DOCtrme  of 
wise.  When  a  State  convention  had  voted  for  the  "  right " 
secession,  even  the  previous  "Union  men"  went  ofsecession 
with  their  State,  conscientiously  and  enthusiastically.  Thus, 
Alexander  H.  Stephens  made  a  desperate  struggle  in  Geor 
gia  for  the  Union,  both  in  the  State  campaign  and  in  the 
convention ;  but  when  the  convention  decided  against  him 
208  to  69, l  he  cast  himself  devotedly  into  secession.  He 
would  have  thought  any  other  course  treason.  Allegiance, 
the  South  felt,  was  due  primarily  to  one's  State. 

To  understand  the  splendid  devotion  of  the  South  to  a 
hopeless  cause  during  the  bloody  years  that  followed,  we 
must  understand  this  viewpoint.  The  South  fought  "to 
keep  the  past  upon  its  throne"  ;  but  it  believed,  with  every 
drop  of  its  blood,  that  it  was  fighting  for  the  sacred  right 
of  self-government,  against  "conquest"  by  tyrannical  "in 
vaders." 

February  4,   a  convention  of  delegates  from  the  seven 
seceding  States  met  to  form  a  new  union  —  "the  Confederate 
States  of  America."     The  constitution  was  mod-  xheSouth- 
eled  upon  that  of  the  old  Union,  with  some  new  em  Con- 
emphasis  on  State  sovereignty.     Jefferson  Davis  f 
was   soon   chosen  President  of  the  Confederacy,  and  Alex 
ander  H.  Stephens  Vice  President. 

The  Confederacy  did  not  believe  the  North  would  use 
force  against  secession.  Still  it  made  vigorous  preparation 
for  possible  war.  As  each  State  seceded,  its  citizens  in 

1  The  real  test  vote  had  come  a  little  earlier  —  165  to  130.  This  was  the  strong 
est  Union  vote  in  the  Lower  South.  In  Mississippi,  the  test  stood  84  to  15;  in 
Florida,  62  to  7 ;  in  Alabama,  61  to  39 ;  in  Louisiana,  113  to  17.  In  Texas  the  ques 
tion  was  referred  to  the  people,  and  in  spite  of  a  vigorous  Union  campaign  by  Governor 
Sam  Houston  they  voted  three  to  one  for  secession. 


528  THE  CIVIL  WAR,   1861-1862 

Congress  and  in  the  service  of  the  United  States  resigned 
their  offices.  The  small  army  and  navy  of  the  Union  was 
And  the  in  this  way  completely  demoralized,  —  losing  nearly 
Union  na}f  ^s  officers.  Each  seceding  State,  too,  seized 

promptly  upon  the  Federal  forts  and  arsenals  within  its 
limits,  —  sending  commissioners  to  Washington  to  arrange 
for  money  compensation.  In  the  seven  seceded  States,  the 
Federal  government  retained  only  Fort  Sumter  in  Charles 
ton  harbor  and  three  forts  on  the  Gulf.  Federal  courts 
ceased  to  be  held  in  the  seceded  States,  because  of  the 
resignation  of  judges  and  other  officials  and  the  absolute 
impossibility  of  securing  jurors.  Federal  tariffs  were  no 
longer  collected.  Only  the  post  office  remained  as  a  symbol 
of  the  old  Union. 

President  Buchanan,  in  his  message  to  Congress  in  De 
cember,  declared  that  the  Constitution  gave  no  State  the 
Buchanan's  right  to  secede,  but  —  a  curious  paradox  —  that  it 
message  gave  the  government  no  right  "to  coerce  a  sov 
ereign  State"  if  it  did  secede.  For  the  remaining  critical 
three  months  of  his  term  he  let  secession  gather  head  as  it 
liked.  With  homely  wit,  Seward  wrote  to  his  wife  that  the 
Message  shows  "  conclusively  that  it  is  the  President's  duty 
to  execute  the  laws  —  unless  some  one  opposes  him ;  and 
that  no  State  has  a  right  to  go  out  of  the  Union  —  unless 
it  wants  to." 

This  flabby  policy,  moreover,  was  much  like  the  attitude 
of  the  masses  of  the  North  during  those  same  months. 
Hesitation  Even  from  Republican  leaders  resounded  the  cry, 
at  the  North  "Let  the  erring  sisters  go  in  peace."  In  October, 
General  Scott,  Commander  of  the  army,  suggested  to  the 
President  a  division  of  the  country  into  four  confederacies, 
—for  which  he  outlined  boundaries.  Northern  papers  de 
clared  "coercion"  both  wrong  and  impossible.  Horace 
Greeley's  New  York  Tribune,  for  years  the  greatest  anti- 
slavery  organ  and  the  chief  molder  of  Republican  opinion, 
expressed  these  views  repeatedly:  "We  hope  never  to  live 
in  a  republic,  whereof  one  section  is  pinned  to  another  by 
bayonets  "  (November  9) ;  "  Five  millions  of  people  .  .  .  can 


HESITATION  AT  THE  NORTH  529 

never  be  subdued  while  fighting  around  their  own  hearth 
stones"  (November  30) ;  "The  South  has  as  good  a  right 
to  secede  from  the  Union  as  the  colonies  had  to  secede 
from  Great  Britain"  (December  17) ;  "If  the  Cotton  States 
wish  to  form  an  independent  nation,  they  have  a  clear  moral 
right  to  do  so"  (February  23,  1861).  Even  Lowell  thought 
the  South  "not  worth  conquering  back."  And  Wendell 
Phillips  asserted  (April  9),  "Abraham  Lincoln  has  no  right 
to  a  soldier  in  Fort  Sumter." 

The  Border  States  urged  one  more  try  at  compromise. 
Virginia  called  a  Peace  Convention  which  was  well  attended 
and  which  sat  at  Washington  through  February.  Attempts 
This  body,  and  many  Republican  leaders,  pro-  atcompro- 
posed  various  amendments  to  the  Constitution  to 
fortify  slavery  and  so  conciliate  the  South :  especially  to 
provide  Federal  compensation  for  escaped  slaves,  and  to 
divide  the  National  domain,  present  and  future,  between 
slavery  and  freedom,  along  the  line  of  the  old  Missouri 
Compromise.  But  the  only  outcome  of  this  compromise 
agitation  was  the  hasty  submission  to  the  country  of  an 
amendment  prohibiting  Congress  from  ever  interfering  with 
slavery  in  the  States.  As  Lincoln  said,  this  merely  made 
express  what  was  already  clearly  implied  in  the  Constitu 
tion,  and  it  was  wholly  inadequate  to  satisfy  the  South. 
It  passed  Congress  with  a  solid  Republican  vote,  however, 
and  was  ratified  by  three  Northern  States  before  war 
stopped  the  process. 

Lincoln's  inaugural,  on  March  4,  was  a  win-  Lincoln's 
ning  answer  to  Southern  claims  and  a  firm  decla-  inaueural 
ration  of  policy. 

[As  to  the  reason  for  secession] :  "Apprehension  seems  to  exist 
among  the  people  of  the  Southern  States  that  .  .  .  their  property 
and  their  peace  and  personal  security  are  to  be  endangered. 
There  has  never  been  any  reasonable  cause  for  such  apprehension. 
...  /  have  no  purpose,  directly  or  indirectly,  to  interfere  with  the 
institution  of  slavery  in  the  States  where  it  exists." 

[After  demolishing  the  constitutional  "right"  of  secession]:  "I 
therefore  consider  that,  in  view  of  the  Constitution  and  the  laws 


530  THE  CIVIL  WAR,   1861-1862 

the  Union  is  unbroken;  and  to  the  extent  of  my  ability,  I  shall  take 
care  .  .  .  that  the  laws  of  the  Union  shall  be  faithfully  executed 
in  all  the  States.  ...  In  doing  this  there  need  be  no  bloodshed  .  .  . 
unless  it  is  forced  upon  the  National  authority.  ...  The  power 
confided  to  me  will  be  used  to  hold  .  .  .  the  property  and  places 
belonging  to  the  government,  and  to  collect  the  duties  and  imposts ; 
but  beyond  what  may  be  necessary  for  these  objects  there  will 
be  no  invasion,  no  using  of  force  against  the  people  anywhere." 

[  Then,  recognizing  the  right  of  revolution,  the  deplorable  loss  from 
any  division  of  the  Union  is  set  forth}:  "Physically  speaking,  we 
cannot  separate :  we  cannot  remove  our  respective  sections  from 
each  other,  nor  build  an  impassable  wall  between  them.  .  .  . 
Intercourse,  either  amicable  or  hostile,  must  continue  between 
them.  Is  it  possible,  then,  to  make  that  intercourse  more  advan 
tageous  or  more  satisfactory  after  separation  than  before?  Can 
aliens  make  treaties  easier  than  friends  can  make  laws  ? 

"In  your  hands,  my  dissatisfied  fellow-countrymen,  and  not  in 
mine,  is  the  momentous  issue  of  civil  war.  .  .  .  You  have  no 
oath  registered  in  heaven  to  destroy  the  government,  while  I 
shall  have  the  most  solemn  one  to  *  preserve,  protect,  and  de 
fend'  it." 

Statesmen  showered  the  new  President  with  advice. 
Lincoln  heard  all  patiently ;  but  his  real  efforts  were  given 
Abraham  to  keeping  in  touch,  not  with  "leaders,"  but  with 
Lincoln  ^he  pjain  people  whom  he  so  well  understood. 
His  own  eyes  were  set  unwavering  upon  his  goal  —  the 
preservation  of  the  Union  —  while  with  unrivaled  skill,  he 
kept  his  finger  on  the  Nation's  pulse,  to  know  how  fast  he 
might  move  toward  that  end.  For  a  time  he  was  railed  at 
by  noisy  extremists,  who  would  have  had  him  faster  or 
slower ;  but  the  silent  masses  responded  to  his  sympathy 
and  answered  his  appeal  with  love  and  perfect  trust,  and 
enabled  him  to  carry  through  successfully  the  greatest  task 
so  far  set  for  any  American  statesman.1 

1  The  country  now  paid  heavily,  through  the  wear  upon  its  burdened  chieftain, 
for  its  low  tone  toward  the  spoils  system.  Washington  was  thronged,  beyond  all 
precedent,  with  office  seekers,  who  were  "Republicans  for  revenue";  and  the 
first  precious  weeks  of  the  new  administration  had  to  go  largely  to  settling  petty 
personal  disputes  over  plunder.  Lincoln  compared  himself  to  a  man  busied  in 
assigning  rooms  in  a  palace  to  importunate  applicants,  while  the  structure  itself  was 


THE  CALL  TO  ARMS  531 

Despite  the  seeming  cowardice  or  apathy  of  Northern 
statesmen,  the  masses  needed  only  a  blow  and  a  leader  to 
rally  them  for  the  Union.  South  Carolina  fired 
on  the  flag,  and  Abraham  Lincoln  called  the 
North  to  arms.  From  November  to  April,  Major  Ander 
son  and  sixty  soldiers  had  held  Fort  Sumter  in  Charleston 
harbor.  In  vain  he  had  pleaded  to  Buchanan  for  reinforce 
ments.  In  January,  Buchanan  made  a  feeble  show  of  send 
ing  some ;  but  the  unarmed  vessel,  weakly  chosen  for  the 
purpose,  was  easily  turned  back  by  Secessionist  shells ;  and 
further  efforts  were  soon  made  difficult  by  rising  batteries 
-  whose  construction  Anderson's  orders  did  not  permit 
him  to  prevent. 

A  month  after  taking  office,  Lincoln  decided,  against  all  his 
Cabinet,  to  send  supplies  to  Anderson.  The  Confederates 
took  this  decision  as  a  declaration  of  war,  and  attacked 
the  fort.  April  12,  the  bombardment  of  Sumter  began ; 
and  thirty  hours  later,  with  the  fortress  in  ruins,  Major 
Anderson  surrendered.  The  next  day  (April  15)  the  wires 
flashed  over  the  country  Lincoln's  stirring  call  for  seventy- 
five  thousand  volunteers. 

This  call  to  arms  brought  a  magnificent  uprising  of  the 
North.  Laborers,  mechanics,  business  men,  professional 
men,  college  boys  and  their  learned  teachers,  And  the 
shouldered  muskets  side  by  side.  From  Maine  to  caU  to  arms 
California,  devotion  and  love  for  the  Union  spoke  with  one 
mighty  voice.  Banks  offered  huge  loans  without  security, 
and  wealthy  men  placed  their  private  fortunes  at  the  dis 
posal  of  the  government.  By  July,  310,000  men  were  in 
the  field.  Before  the  close  of  1861,  the  number  was  660,000, 
enlisted  for  "three  years  or  the  war."  Party  distinctions  in 
the  North  faded.  Talk  of  compromise  was  drowned  in  the 
din  of  arms.  Douglas,  dying  though  he  was,  hastened 
gallantly  to  Lincoln's  support ;  and  Buchanan  gave  cordial 
aid.  Lowell  wrote  of  "that  first  gun  at  Sumter  which 

burning  over  his  head;  and  in  1862,  when  an  old  Illinois  friend  remarked  on  his 
careworn  face,  he  exclaimed  with  petulant  humor,  —  "It  isn't  this  war  that's  kill 
ing  me,  Judge  :  it's  your  confounded  Pepperton  postoffice!" 


532 


THE   CIVIL  WAR,   1861-1862 


brought  the  free  States  to  their  feet  as  one  man";  and 
four  years  later,  while  sorrowing  for  his  own  glorious  dead, 
he  told  again  how 

"America  lay  asleep,  like  the  princess  of  the  fairy  tale,  enchanted 
by  prosperity.  But  at  the  fiery  kiss  of  war,  the  spell  is  broken,  the 
blood  tingles  along  her  veins,  and  she  awakens,  conscious  of  her  beauty 
and  her  sovereignty.  .  .  .  What  splendid  possibilities  has  not  our 
trial  revealed,  even  to  ourselves!  .  What  costly  stuff  whereof  to  make 
a  Nation!" 


UNION  AND  CONFEDERACY  IN  1862. 

The  Confederacy  sprang  to  arms  with  even  greater 
unanimity.  And  now  the  remaining  Slave  States  had  to 
Second  choose  sides.  Within  six  weeks  the  second  tier 
tier  of  Slave  (North  Carolina  and  Virginia,  Tennessee,  Arkan- 
states  sas)  joined  the  Confederacy  rather  than  join  in 

attempts  "to  coerce  sister  States";1  and  the 
Confederate  capital  was  moved  from  Montgomery  to  Rich 
mond,  within  striking  distance  of  Washington. 

1  The  people  of  the  western  counties  in  Virginia  had  been  opposed  to  secession. 
When  the  State  withdrew,  they  organized  a  separate  State  government,  and  (1863) 
were  admitted  to  the  Union  as  West  Virginia.  The  legislature  of  Tennessee  sub 
mitted  the  matter  directly  to  the  people;  and  the  popular  vote  stood  105,000  to 
47,000  (the  eastern  mountain  counties,  like  their  Virginia  neighbors,  containing  a 
strong  Union  element).  In  Virginia  the  convention  vote  was  two  to  one  for 


THE  CALL  TO  ARMS  533 

The  third  tier  of  Slave  States  (Maryland  and  Delaware, 
Kentucky,  Missouri)  were  the  true  "Border  States." 
Delaware  was  firm  for  the  Union  from  the  first ;  The  Border 
and  in  spite  of  strong  secession  sentiment,  the  states 
others  were  finally  kept  in  the  Union  by  Lincoln's  wise 
diplomacy  and  by  swift  action  of  Union  armies,  —  though 
their  inhabitants  sent  many  regiments  to  swell  the  South 
ern  ranks.  Missouri  would  have  joined  the  Confederacy 
except  for  vigorous  measures  by  the  many  thousands  of 
recent,  freedom-loving  German  immigrants  in  St.  Louis, 
who  stood  stoutly  for  the  Union.  The  lines  were  drawn, 
twenty -two  States  against  eleven. 

secession.  There  also  the  question  was  submitted  to  a  popular  vote;  and  the 
people  sustained  the  convention  by  a  vote  of  three  to  one  —  the  opposition  coming 
almost  wholly  from  the  western  counties.  A  Virginian  who  had  been  a  Unionist 
delegate  in  the  convention  was  asked  just  afterwards  —  "What  will  the  Union  men 
of  Virginia  do  ?"  '  "There  are  no  Union  men  left  in  Virginia,"  came  the  swift  reply. 
"  We  stand  this  day  a  united  people.  .  .  .  We  will  give  you  a  fight  that  will  stand 
out  on  the  page  of  history." 


CHAPTER  XXXIV 

THE   CIVIL   WAR 

AT  first  the  North  expected  confidently  to  end  the  con 
flict  in  three  months  —  "by  one  decisive  blow."  From  this 
B  11  R  dream  the  country  awoke  when  the  Union  forces 

were  utterly  routed  at  Bull  Run  (July  21)  in  an 
advance  on  Richmond.  Then,  in  more  wholesome  temper, 
it  settled  down  to  a  stern  war.  That  war  lasted  four  years, 
and  was  the  most  tremendousstruggle  the  world  had  ever 
seen. 

To  subdue  the  South  two  things  were  essential :  (1)  The 
seceding  States  must  be  invaded  and  conquered  on  their 
own  soil ;  but  this  was  plainly  impossible  unless  (2)  a 
cordon  was  first  drawn  about  them,  so  that  they  could  get 
no  supplies  from  the  outside  world. 

To  completely  beleaguer  the  South,  then,  was  the  first 
task.  On  the  land  side,  the  overwhelming  numbers  of  the 
Plans  of  North  made  this  fairly  easy.  The  Border  States 
campaigns  were  quickly  occupied,  and  the  South  was  kept 
upon  the  defensive.  She  did  make  some  daring  raids  into 
Kentucky  and  two  formidable  invasions  across  the  Potomac 
that  threw  the  North  Atlantic  cities  into  panic;  but  all 
these  sorties  were  failures.  The  first  one  across  the  Poto 
mac  was  turned  back  at  Antteta^  September  17,  1862  ;  and 
the  second,  the  "high-tide  of  the  Confederacy,"  at  Gettys 
burg,  July  1-3,  1863. 

To  close  the  three  thousand  miles  of  sea  coast  was  a  more 
difficult  matter.  April  19,  1861,  Lincoln  declared  it  block- 
The  aded ;  but  this  was  little  more  than  a  statement 

blockade  of  intention.  Only  twelve  ships  were  at  the  gov 
ernment's  command.  The  rest  of  the  small  navy  of  forty- 
nine  ships  had  fallen  into  Southern  hands  or  was  scattered 

534 


THE  ARBITRAMENT  OF  ARMS  535 

far  in  foreign  ports.  But  blockading  squadrons  were  hur 
riedly  bought,  built,  and  adapted  out  of  coasting  steamers 
and  ferryboats ;  and  in  a  few  months  the  paper  blockade 
became  real.  From  that  time  to  the  end,  the  throttling 
grip  on  Southern  commerce  clung  closer  and  closer. 

The  export  crops,  cotton  and  tobacco,  were  robbed  of 
value.  In  1860  the  cotton  export  amounted  to  nearly  two 
hundred  millions  of  dollars ;  in  1862,  to  four  millions.  As 
arms,  railway  material,  clothing,  wore  out,  it  was  almost 
impossible  to  replenish  the  supply.  Before  the  end  of  the 
first  year,  there  was  an  alarming  scarcity  of  salt,  butter, 
coffee,  candles,  and  medicines.  By  recourse  to  homespun, 
and  by  raising  corn  instead  of  cotton,  part  of  the  need  was 
met.  Part  was  beyond  remedy. 

Southern  sympathizers  and  venturesome  capitalists  made 
it  a  business  to  build  swift  "blockade  runners"  to  carry 
supplies  to  Confederate  ports  from  the  Bermudas,  and  to 
bring  out  the  cotton  piled  up  at  Southern  wharves  and  worth 
fabulous  prices  in  the  idle  European  factories.  Fifteen 
hundred  such  vessels  were  captured  during  the  war ;  and, 
before  the  close,  they  had  nearly  vanished  from  the  seas. 
While  trips  could  be  made  at  all,  profits  were  enormous.  A 
ton  of  salt,  costing  $7.50  outside  the  Confederacy,  could  be 
sold  inside  in  gold  for  a  profit  of  20,000  per  cent. 

For  one  moment  it  looked  as  if  the  Union  fleets  would 
be  swept  from  the  seas,  and  the  blockade  raised.     When  the 
government  troops  abandoned  Norfolk  navy  yard  The 
(on  the   secession  of    Virginia),   they  left   there,  Monitor 
only    partially    destroyed,  the   frigate  Merrimac.  * 
The  Confederates  built  on  her  hull  an  iron  roofing,  and  sent 
her  forth  as  the  Virginia  against  the  wooden  frigates  of  the 
United  States  in  Hampton  Roads.     This  first  armored  ram 
on  the  American  coast  sank  two  towering  ships  (March  8, 
1862),  and  steamed   back  to    her    anchorage,  confident    of 
completing  her  mission  on  the  morrow.     But,  during  that 
night,  arrived  at  the  Roads  another  type  of  iron  vessel,  the 
Monitor,  with  low,  flat  deck  surmounted  by  a  revolving  tur 
ret  mounting  two  huge  guns,  —  a  "cheese  box  on  a  raft." 


536 


THE  CIVIL  WAR,    1861-1865 


After  a  sharp  engagement,  the  Virginia  was  driven  to  seek 
shelter.  The  blockade  was  saved,  —  and  the  knell  had 
sounded  for  wooden  men-of-war.  Vessels  had  been  covered 
with  iron  plates  in  some  of  the  earlier  campaigns  on  the 
Mississippi,  and  England  and  France  had  constructed  some 
ironclads  ;  but  it  was  the  spectacular  battle  of  "the  Monitor 
and  Merrimac  "  which  demonstrated  to  the  world  the  arrival 
of  a  new  order. 

Invasion  of  the  Confederacy  had  been  simplified  tremen 
dously  by  the  saving  of  the  Border  States  to  the  Union. 
Lines  for  There  were  three  primary  lines  of  attack.  The 
Union  Army  of  the  Potomac,  with  headquarters  about 

Washington,  must  try  to  capture  Richmond,  the 
political  center  of  the  Confederacy,  and  crush  the  army  of 


GULF         OF        MEXICO 


SCENE  OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR. 


defense  —  the  Army  of  Northern  Virginia.  In  the  West, 
the  Unionists  must  secure  the  Tennessee  and  Cumberland 
rivers,  so  as  to  occupy  Tennessee  and  to  open  roads  into 
Mississippi  and  Alabama.  And  the  course  of  the  Missis- 


IN  THE  FIELD 


537 


sippi  had  to  be  secured  by  the  capture  of  such  Confederate 
strongholds  as  New  Madrid,  Island  No.  10,  Port  Hudson, 
Memphis,  and  New  Orleans.  (Secondary  lines  of  invasion 
were  pointed  out  by  the  location  of  the  more  important 
railways  —  especially  those  from  west  to  east,  such  as  the 
Memphis  and  Charleston  Road.  To  secure  these  roads, 
engagements  were  fought  in  1862  at  Corinth,  Pittsburg 
Landing,  Shiloh,  and  Memphis.) 

Vicksburg,  the  last  of  the  river  fortresses  to  hold  out,  was 
forced  to  surrender  to  General  Grant  on  July  3,  1863  (the 
final  day    of   Gettysburg) ;   so  that  the  Father  of  opening  of 
Waters   "once  more  rolled  un vexed  to  the  sea,"  the  Mis- 
cutting  off  Arkansas,  Texas,  and  most  of  Louisiana  slsslppl 
from  the  main  body  of  the  Confederacy.     The  second  task 


UNION  AND  CONFEDERACY  AFTER  GETTYSBURG. 

had  begun  earlier,  but  lasted  longer.  Grant  had  captured 
Forts  Donelson  and  Henry,  commanding  the  lower  courses 
of  the  Tennessee  rivers,  in  1862 ;  but  Union  occupation  of 
Tennessee,  and  indeed  of  the  line  of  the  Ohio,  was  not 
assured,  until,  after  oscillating  campaigns  and  some  of  the 
most  bloody  fighting  of  the  war,  Grant,  Thomas,  and  Sher 
man  drove  the  Confederates  from  Chattanooga,  in  November 
of  1863. 


538 


THE  CIVIL  WAR,   1861-1865 


IN  THE  FIELD  539 

This  decisive  victory  opened  up  a  fourth  line  of  invasion, 
to  Atlanta,  at  the  farther  end  of  the  Atlanta  and  Chatta 
nooga  Railway,  —  only  135  miles  distant,  but  with  Sherman'S 
an  intervening  region  of  rugged  mountains.     At-  March  to 
lanta  was  located  in  the  iron  and  coal  region  of  1 
northern  Georgia  and  was  becoming  a  center  for  manufac 
turing  arms  and  railway  material.     As  the  only  such  center 
in  the  Confederacy,  its  capture  was  of  supreme  importance. 
This  became  Sherman's  task  in  the  summer  of  '64  in  a  four 
months'  campaign,  against  the  skillful  opposition  of  the  out 
numbered  Johnston  and  the  pounding  of  his  desperate  suc 
cessor,  Hood. 

Atlanta  was  taken  September  3.  Leaving  its  factories 
in  ashes,  and  detaching  Thomas  with  sufficient  force  to 
engage  Hood,  Sherman  then  (November)  struck  out  a 
fifth  line  of  invasion,  through  the  heart  of  the  Confederacy 
for  Savannah,  —  living  on  the  country  and  finding  not  even  a 
militia  to  oppose  him. 

Meantime,  in  the  East,  the  genius  of  Lee  1  and  the  splendid 
fighting   qualities   of   his   devoted   but   diminishing    army, 
aided,  too,  by  geographical  conditions,  —  trackless  Lee,s  mag_ 
swamps   and   broad   streams   subject   to    sudden  nificent  de- 
floods,  —  held  the  Union  forces  at  bay  year  after 
year,  until  Grant  was  brought  from  the  West  and  given  men 
in  ever  fresh  multitudes  to  wear  down  his  opponents.     Even 
then,  Lee's   thinned   and   starving  veterans   remained   un- 
conquered,  until  the  empty  shell  of  the  Confed-  collapse  of 
eracy   had    been    pierced   from   circumference  to  the  Con- 
circumference,  and  its  absolute  exhaustion  bared  f 
to   the  world   by   Sherman's   devastating   "March   to  the 
Sea."     The  South  did  not  yield  ;   it  was  pulverized. 

1  Robert  E.  Lee  ranks  among  the  noblest  figures  in  American  history.  He 
loved  the  Union  deeply ;  but  when  Virginia  seceded,  he  declined  an  offer  of  the 
command  of  the  Union  armies,  and  gave  his  sword  to  the  Confederacy.  The  recent 
acceptance  by  Congress  of  his  statue,  to  stand  in  Statuary  Hall  in  the  Capitol  be 
side  Virginia's  other  great  son,  Washington,  fitly  denotes  the  reunion  of  North  and 
South  as  one  people.  It  is  pleasant  to  record  that,  even  at  the  surrender,  when 
Lee  rode  into  captured  Richmond  the  Northern  soldiers  there  gave  him  an  ovation 
such  as  they  seldom  gave  their  own  generals. 


540  THE  CIVIL  WAR,   1861-1865 

In  the  North  one  man  out  of  two  bore  arms  at  some  period 
of  the  war ;  and  one  man  out  of  three  served  three  years. 
In  the  south  nine  men  out  of  ten  bore  arms,  and 
eight  out  of  ten  served  three  years.  The  total  en 
listments  in  the  North  counted  2,900,000 ;  in  the  South, 
1,400,000.  The  three-year  average  for  the  North  was 
1,557,000;  for  the  South,  1,082,000.  With  far  less  effort 
than  the  South,  the  North  kept  a  half  more  men  in  the  field. 

But  this  does  not  take  account  of  the  slaves  who  served  as 
teamsters,  laborers  on  fortifications,  cooks,  and  servants,  in 
Southern  armies,  doing  work  that  had  to  be  performed  by 
enlisted  men  on  the  other  side.1  The  Southern  forces,  too, 
were  able  to  concentrate  more  rapidly,  because  they  moved 
on  the  inside  lines  and  knew  the  roads  better.  Perhaps, 
too,  they  were  handled  with  greater  skill.  The  North, 
after  costly  experimenting,  found  some  excellent  command 
ers,  Hancock,  Hooker,  Sherman,  Sheridan,  Grant;  but  the 
South  had  ready  a  larger  proportion  of  its  noblest  sons  with 
the  best  West  Point  training  and  with  military  experience. 
Indeed  the  South  was  better  suited,  by  its  whole  spirit  to 
develop  military  genius ;  and  all  America  to-day  glories  in 
the  splendid  chivalry  and  magnificent  generalship  of  a 
score  of  Confederate  leaders,  among  whom  —  only  a  little 
brighter  than  the  rest  —  shine  the  names  of  "  Stonewall  " 
Jackson,  Gordon,  Longstreet,  the  two  Johnstons,  "  Jeb " 
Stuart,  and  Lee. 

On  the  whole,  until  the  final  year,  the  armies  in  actual 
conflict  did  not  often  vary  greatly  in  numbers.  Then, 
indeed,  the  exhausted  South  could  no  longer  make  good 
her  losses  in  battle  —  though  her  stern  recruiting  system 
did  "rob  the  cradle  and  the  grave."  Her  ranks  shrank 
daily,  while  the  Northern  armies  grew  larger  than  ever. 
At  the  opening  of  that  last  terrible  year  of  slaughter,  from 
May  5  to  June  12  (1864),  —  or  from  the  Wilderness  to 
Petersburg,  —  Grant  hurled  his  120,000  veterans  almost 

1  On  the  plantations,  too,  under  the  management  of  women,  slaves  raised  the 
food  crops  for  the  South.  Wonderful  to  say,  there  was  no  hint  of  a  slave-rising 
during  the  war,  and,  until  1863,  very  little  increase  of  runaways. 


FORCES,  NORTH  AND  SOUTH 


541 


LEE  AND  JACKSON.  The  name  "  Stonewall "  was  given  Jackson  at  Bull  Run, 
where  his  brigade  withstood  what  at  first  seemed  an  overwhelming  Union  onset. 
Like  Cromwell's  Ironsides,  Jackson  was  wont  to  kneel  in  prayer  before  a  charge- 
He  was  called  Lee's  right  hand. 


542  THE  CIVIL  WAR,   1861-1865 

daily  at  Lee's  70,000,  suffering  a  loss  of  60,000  to  Lee's 
14,000.  New  recruits  were  always  ready  to  step  into  the 
gaps  in  the  Union  regiments ;  while  the  Confederate  ranks 
could  only  close  up  grimly.  In  the  remaining  campaigns, 
the  Union  forces  usually  outnumbered  their  opponents  at 
least  two  to  one.  To  add  to  the  disparity,  Grant  sternly 
refused  to  exchange  prisoners. 

Military  prisons  are  always  a  sore  subject.  There  is 
usually  a  tendency,  in  a  long  conflict,  for  their  administra- 
tion,  on  both  sides,  to  fall  to  men  less  competent 
and  less  chivalrous  than  those  who  seek  service  at 
the  front.  Even  in  the  early  years  of  the  war,  there  had  been 
terrible  misery  in  the  prisons  at  the  South  —  where  medicines 
and  supplies  were  wanting  even  for  the  Confederate  soldiers. 
With  less  excuse,  there  had  been  cruel  suffering  also  in  North 
ern  prison  camps.  Toward  the  close,  when  the  South  was 
unable  to  feed  her  soldiers  at  the  front,  or  to  spare  adequate 
forces  for  guards,  conditions  became  horrible  in  the  Southern 
prisons,  —  especially  after  Grant's  refusal  to  exchange  pris 
oners  packed  the  already  crowded  Libby  and  Anderson- 
ville  with  Union  soldiers.  On  this  whole  topic  the  student 
will  do  well  to  consult  Rhodes'  exhaustive  and  impartial 
treatment  (History,  V,  483-515),  and  especially  to  note  his 
conclusion  :  "All  things  considered,  the  statistics  [of  deaths] 
show  no  reason  why  the  North  should  reproach  the  South." 

In  1863  there  was  a  falling  off  of  enlistment  in  the  North, 
and  Congress  authorized  a  "draft,"  -a  conscription  by  lot 
from  able-bodied  males  between  the  ages  of  twenty 
and  forty.  In  enforcing  this  law,  some  officials 
seem  to  have  discriminated  against  Democratic  districts  ;  and 
violent  anti-draft  riots  broke  out  in  several  Eastern  cities. 
These  were  put  down  sternly  by  the  military ;  but  not  till 
New  York  had  been  three  days  in  the  hands  of  a  murderous 
"nigger-hunting"  mob,  and  only  after  a  sacrifice  of  a  thou 
sand  lives. 

Altogether  the  draft  furnished  less  than  forty  thousand 
troops .  Its  real  work  lay  in  influencing  State  legislatures  to 


FINANCES  543 

stimulate  enlistment  by  generous  bounties.  Such  moneys 
furnished  support  for  dependent  mothers  and  for  children, 
and  so  enabled  many  a  man  to  volunteer  who  otherwise 
must  have  worked  at  home.  But  it  remains  absolutely 
true,  as  Lowell  said,  that  "the  bounty  which  drew  our  best 
soldiers  to  the  ranks  was  an  idea"  For  the  South,  this 
was  even  more  true,  mistaken  though  the  idea  was ;  but 
even  the  South  had  recourse  to  conscription,  extending  it 
to  boys  of  seventeen  and  men  of  fifty.  In  most  districts, 
however,  volunteer  enlistment  had  left  small  gleanings  for 
this  desperate  law. 

The  Buchanan  administration  had  left  the  treasury  empty, 
a  debt  mounting,  and  credit  dubious ;  but  Salmon  P.  Chase, 
Lincoln's  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  was  supported  _ 

n      ,         ~  J  »       •  War  finance 

loyally  by  Congress  in  a  course  ot  vigorous  war 
finance.  Year  by  year,  bonds  were  sold  at  home  or  abroad 
in  amounts  which  at  any  earlier  time  would  have  seemed 
fabulous.  A  direct  tax  of  $20,000,000  was  apportioned 
among  the  States.  An  income  tax  of  3  per  cent  on  all  in 
comes  over  $800  was  imposed ;  and  in  1864  this  was  raised 
to  4  per  cent  (but  on  the  largest  surpluses  the  rates  rose 
only  to  10  per  cent !).  Internal  excises  and  stamp  duties  of 
the  most  varied  and  searching  description  reached  almost  all 
callings,  products,  and  business  transactions.  Session  by 
session  Congress  devised  higher  and  higher  "war-tariffs," 
rising  to  rates  before  unheard  of,  to  remain  without  change 
twenty  years  after  the  war  was  over.  And  a  series  of  "Legal 
Tender  Acts"  provided  half  a  billion  of  dollars  of  paper 
money,  based  only  on  the  faith  of  the  government  and 
amounting  to  a  "forced  loan." 

These  "greenbacks"  mentioned  no  specific  date  for  re 
demption,  nor  did  the  law  provide  any  specific  security,  and 
of  course  the  value  fluctuated  with  success  or  fail-  "  Green- 
ure  in  the  field.     Depreciation  set  in  at  once.     Gold  backs" 
was  hoarded  or  sent  abroad  in  trade ;  and  on  one  dark  day  in 
1864  it  sold  at  285,  while  most  of  the  time  after  1862  a  dollar 
of  paper  was  really  worth  only  from  fifty  to  seventy  cents. 


544  THE  CIVIL  WAR,   1861-1865 

Prices  rose,  for  this  reason  and  for  other  causes  connected 
with  the  war,  to  some  90  per  cent  above  the  old  level. 
Wages  rose,  too;  but  more  slowly,  and  only  two  thirds 
as  much,  —  so  that  the  laboring  classes  bore  the  great 
part  of  the  cost  of  the  war.  Workingmen  endured  much 
suffering,  even  while  "business"  was  exceedingly  "pros 
perous." 

Toward  the  close  of  the  war,  taxation  was  bringing  in  half 
a  billion  a  year ;  but  in  1863  the  expenditure  had  risen  to  two 
Taxes  and  and  a  half  millions  a  day  —  or  two  times  the  daily 
bonds  income.  Business  could  not  well  stand  more  taxes ; 

nor  could  more  paper  money  be  issued  safely.  The  extra 
amount  must  be  borrowed  by  selling  new  bonds.  But  how 
could  the  government  induce  capitalists  to  buy  them  in 
sufficient  amounts?  Chase  solved  this  problem  in  part  by 
the  National  Banking  Acts  of  1863  and  1864  —  the  basis  also 
of  a  system  of  banks  and  bank  currency  which,  whatever 
its  later  faults,  was  far  better  than  America  had  before 
known.  Any  association  of  five  or  more  persons,  with  a 
capital  of  at  least  $100,000,  was  authorized  (1)  to  organize 
a  National  bank,  (2)  purchase  National  bonds  to  the 
amount  of  one  third  the  capital,  (3)  deposit  the  bonds  in 
the  National  Treasury,  and  (4)  issue  "National  bank  notes" 
on  that  security.  A  supplementary  Act  placed  a  tax  of 
10  per  cent  on  notes  issued  by  State  banks.  Hundreds  of 
State  banks  then  reorganized  as  National  banks,  and  their 
new  demand  for  bonds  met  the  needs  of  the  Treasury. 

Capital  is  notoriously  timid,  and  business  notoriously 
selfish.  There  were  not  wanting  the  customary  shames  of 
army  contractors  who  swelled  their  fortunes  by  furnishing 
shoddy  clothing,  paper-soled  shoes,  and  rotten  food  to  the 
troops;  while  other  more  adventurous  pirates  of  finance 
made  fabulous  profits  by  illicit  or  treasonable  trade  with 
the  South.  But  on  the  whole  the  moneyed  men  showed  a 
noble  patriotism.  Andrew  D.  White  tells  a  typical  story 
(Autobiography,  I,  89)  of  the  roughly  expressed  idealism  of 
a  multimillionaire  —  still  a  rare  phenomenon  in  the  sixties 
—  a  man  who  had 


THE  RUIN  OF  THE  SOUTH  545 

"risen  by  hard  work  from  simple  beginnings  to  the  head  of  an 
immense  business  ...  a  hard,  determined,  shrewd  man  of  affairs, 
the  last  man  in  the  world  to  show  anything  like  sentimentalism. 
.  .  .  He  said  something  advising  investment  in  the  newly  created 
national  debt.  I  answered,  'You  are  not,  then,  one  of  those  who 
believe  that  our  debt  will  be  repudiated?'  He  rejoined:  'Re 
pudiation  or  no  repudiation,  I  am  putting  everything  I  can  rake 
and  scrape  together  into  national  bonds,  to  help  this  government 
maintain  itself ;  for,  by  God,  if  I  am  not  to  have  any  country,  I 
don't  want  any  money."3 

Northern  statesmanship  also  devoted  itself  deliberately 
and  effectively  to  encouraging  the  production  of  wealth  - 
that  there  might  be  more  to  tax.     The  demand  for  Growth  of 
war  supplies  and  the  high  tariffs  stimulated  manu-  wealth  in 
factures  enormously.     Congress  gave  vast  amounts  * 
of  land  and  money  to  the  Union  Pacific  to  enable  that  com 
pany  to  build  a  railway  across  the  continent,  and  other  rail 
ways  opened  up  great  tracts  of  new  territory  to  agriculture. 
In  1862  the  Morrill  Bill  offered  National  land  grants  to  State 
institutions  providing  scientific  training  in  agriculture  and 
in  mechanical  arts.     The  same  year  the  long-delayed  "  Home 
stead  Bill"  offered  free  160  acres  of  land  to  any  head  of  a 
family  who  would  live  upon  and  improve  it. 

The  South  had  little  wealth  to  tax.     It  had  no  capitalists 
to  buy  its  bonds ;   and  they  could  not  long  be  sold  abroad. 
Paper  money  was  issued  in  floods  by  both  central  confed- 
and  State  governments,  —  and  depreciated  even  erate 
faster  than  the  famous  "Continental  currency"  of 
Revolutionary  days,  so  that  in  1864  it  was  not  unusual  for 
a  Southern  soldier  to  pay  $200  for  a  poor  pair  of  shoes.     The 
Confederacy  did  not  formally  make  this  paper  a  legal  tender ; 
but,  before  the  end  of  the  war,  it  was  forced  to  seize  supplies 
from  the  fields  and  barns,  and  it  could  pay  for  them  only  in 
this  money  —  at  rates  fixed  from  month  to  month  by  govern 
ment  decree.     Neither  bonds  nor  currency  were  ever  re 
deemed. 

Thus  the  South  lived  upon  itself.     And  the  capital  that 
could  not  be  eaten,  —  that  which  was  fixed  in  buildings  and 


546  THE  CIVIL  WAR,   1861-1865 

roads,  —  was  in  large  part  burned  or  ruined  by  the  Northern 
invaders.  Southern  wealth  was  gone  before  the  survivors 
of  her  heroic  men  laid  down  their  arms.  The  world  had 
never  seen  another  so  vast  and  complete  a  devastation  of  a 
civilized  land. 

The  great  Republic  emerged  from  the  battle-storm,  glo 
rious  and  whole,  while  the  world  stood  amazed,  convinced 
Devotion  to  agamst  its  will.  The  resources  of  the  North  were 
the  Lost  never  lacking.  They  grew  faster  than  they  could 
be  spent ;  and  the  North  had  more  men,  more  tilled 
acres,  more  manufactures  in  1865  than  in  1861.  But  for  the 
South,  as  Woodrow  Wilson  says  so  well,  "  the  great  struggle 
was  maintained  by  sheer  spirit  and  self-devotion,  in  spite  of 
constantly  diminishing  resources  and  constantly  waning 
hope.  .  .  .  And  all  for  a  belated  principle  in  government, 
an  outgrown  economy,  an  impossible  purpose.  There  is  in 
history  no  devotion  not  religious,  no  constancy  not  meant  for 
success,  that  can  furnish  a  parallel  to  the  devotion  and  con 
stancy  of  the  South  in  this  extraordinary  war."  The  Ameri 
can  of  to-day  sorrows  at  the  terrible  sacrifice  the  South  made 
for  mistaken  ends ;  but  his  heart  swells  with  patriotic  emo 
tion  at  the  heroic  vision  of  that  chivalrous  devotion  to  the 
Lost  Cause,  —  that  gallant  constancy,  that  peerless  courage. 

When  the  war  began,  a  large  part  of  the  North  cared  noth 
ing  about  abolishing  slavery,  or  was  positively  opposed  to 
The  war  doing  so  ;  and  the  loyal  Border  States  were  kept  in 
and  slavery  ^ne  Urncm  only  by  repeated  assurances  from  the 
government  that  the  war  was  not  intended  to  free  slaves. 
The  day  after  Bull  Run,  by  107  to  2,  the  Republican  House 
reassured  the  War  Democrats  and  the  Border  States  to  this 
effect.  In  the  opening  weeks  of  the  struggle,  it  is  true, 
"  Contra-  General  Butler,  at  Fortress  Monroe,  refused  to  de- 
bands  "  liver  to  an  owner  in  the  Confederate  army  a  run 
away  slave  who  had  escaped  to  the  Union  lines,  —  on  the 
ground  that  the  man  was  "contraband  of  war"  (since  he 
might  be  made  useful  to  the  enemy).  This  logic  was  so 
sound,  and  the  phrase  so  caught  the  popular  approval, 


THE  END  OF  SLAVERY  547 

that  the  government  did  not  interfere  with  the  Union 
generals  who  chose  thereafter  to  free  "contrabands"  seek 
ing  refuge  within  their  lines.  But  when  General  Fre 
mont,  in  Missouri,  proclaimed  free  the  slaves  of  all  citizens 
of  that  State  who  were  in  arms  for  the  Confederacy,  the 
order  was  promptly  disavowed  by  President  Lincoln.  For  a 
year  more,  the  majority  of  the  Union  generals  were  inclined 
to  enforce  the  Fugitive  Slave  Act  as  to  Negroes  who  sought 
refuge  with  the  army,  even  when  the  owners  were  serving 
in  the  Confederate  ranks. 

But  it  became  more  and  more  plain  that,  if  the  North  was 
successful,  the  result  must  be  freedom  for  the  Negro;  and, 
in  March,  1862,  Lincoln  recommended  to  Congress  that  the 
States  should  be  invited  to  decree  gradual  emancipation, 
and  that,  wherever  this  was  done  the  United  States  should 
compensate  the  owners  and  colonize  the  freed  Negroes. 

This  wise  plan  was  never  adopted.  In  April  Congress 
abolished  slavery  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  it  is  tru^  (with  an 
appropriation  of  $1,000,000  to  compensate  the 

j     •       T  -1      i      v   i       i     i  •       .1        Slavery 

owners) ;  and,  in  June,  it  abolished  slavery  in  the  abolished 
Territories,  without  compensation.     It  also  passed  inDistnct 

/    j.  •  T  •         i    >       i        £       xi       a;  of  Columbia 

resolutions  approving  Lincoln  s  plan  tor  the  States. 
But  the  President's  earnest  appeals  to  the  Union  leaders  of 
the  Border  to  persuade  their  States  to  act  promptly  and 
secure  compensation  for  their  slaves  before  it  was  too  late, 
fell  upon  deaf  ears.  They  could  not  yet  believe  his  proph 
ecy  that  soon  they  would  find  "bonds  better  property  than 
bondsmen"  ;  and  the  opportunity  passed. 

Congress   adjourned   for   the   season   on   July    17,    1862. 
Five  days  later,  Lincoln  read  to  his  surprised  Cabinet  the 
draft  of  a  proposed  Emancipation  Proclamation. 
This  was  not  to  apply  to  the  Border  States,  or  to  the  Emancipa- 
Southern  territory  under  Union  control.     The  only  ^°an.p™cla~ 
warrant  in  the  Constitution  for  such  action  by  the 
President  had  to  be  found  in  his  powers  as  Commander  in 
Chief.     The  Proclamation,  in  form,  was  merely  a  war  meas 
ure,  designed  to  weaken  the  enemy. 

At  Seward's  suggestion,  Lincoln  put  the  matter  aside, 


548  THE  CIVIL  WAR,   1861-1865 

to  wait  for  some  signal  victory  —  of  which  there  had 
been  few  for  a  long  year  —  that  the  Proclamation  might  not 
seem  the  act  of  a  despairing  government.  Two  months 
later,  Lee's  retreat  after  Antietam  (page  534)  furnished  the 
appearance  of  a  victory ;  and  September  23  the  great  Proc 
lamation  was  given  to  the  world,  —  to  go  into  operation  on 
the  first  day  of  the  coming  year.  The  Proclamation  made 
an  era  in  history.  At  the  moment,  of  course,  it  was  a  paper 
edict,  and  did  not  actually  free  a  slave.  But  from  that  day 
the  war  became  a  war  to  free  slaves;  and,  as  Union  armies 
slowly  conquered  their  way  into  the  South,  thousands,  and 
finally  millions,  did  become  free. 

True,  cautious  as  Lincoln  had  been,  it  seemed  for  a  time 
as  though  he  had  moved  too  swiftly  for  Northern  opinion. 
The  fall  elections  gave  anti-war  majorities  in  several  of  the 
largest  Northern  States,  before  strongly  Republican.  In 
Ohio  the  Democrats  carried  14  congressional  districts  out 
of  19;  in  Indiana,  8  out  of  11 ;  in  Illinois,  11  out  of  14. 
Says  Professor  A.  B.  Hart  (Salmon  P.  Chase,  270):  "No 
Republican  majority  could  be  secured  out  of  the  free  States ; 
but  a  silent  and  drastic  process  was  applied  by  the  military 
in  the  loyal  Border  States,  which  caused  them  to  furnish 
enough  Republican  members  to  make  up  the  majority 
without  which  the  war  must  have  failed."  By  such  dubious 
means,  21  Republican  Representatives  were  secured  from 
the  26  Congressional  districts  of  Missouri,  Kentucky,  and 
Maryland. 

And  after  an  interval  of  dismay  the  Nation  rallied. 
Emancipation  was  accepted  as  a  settled  policy ;  and,  in 
state  1864,  Lincoln  was  reflected  triumphantly,  carrying 

Emandpa-  every  loyal  State  except  New  Jersey,  Delaware,  and 
Kentucky.  Before  the  close  of  the  war,  Maryland, 
Missouri,  and  West  Virginia  abolished  slavery  without  com 
pensation  ;  and  "Reconstruction  governments"  (page  557)  in 
Tennessee,  Louisiana,  and  Virginia  freed  the  slaves  in  those 
parts  of  the  Confederacy  to  which  the  Proclamation  had 
not  applied.  Then  "the  whole  thing  was  wound  up,"  in 
Lincoln's  expressive  phrase,  —  all  informalities  legalized,  all 


ENGLAND'S  ATTITUDE  549 

possible   gaps   covered,   and    the   institution    itself    forever 
forbidden, l    -  by  the  Thirteenth   Amendment    (ratified   in 
December,  1865).     It  was  this  amendment  which  The 
freed    the    remaining    slaves    in     Kentucky    and  Thirteenth 

Delaware.  Amendment 

After  the  Emancipation  Proclamation,  the  government 
began  to  receive  Negro  regiments  into  the  army.  More 
than  fifty  thousand  Black  men  were  enrolled  during  the 
remaining  months  of  the  war ;  and  large  numbers  of 
others  were  now  used  as  teamsters  and  for  camp  work 
which  had  formerly  rested  on  Northern  White  soldiers. 
Emancipation,  too,  ended  all  chance  of  the  South  getting 
European  aid. 

Both  North  and  South  had  counted  upon  English  sym 
pathy.  The  South  hoped  that  England  would  break  the 
blockade,  to  secure  cotton,  so  as  to  give  work  to  her  idle  fac 
tories  and  her  hundreds  of  thousands  of  starving  operatives. 
The  North  felt  that  England  must  favor  war  England 
against  slavery,  —  forgetting,  perhaps,  that  for  and  the 
more  than  a  year  it  vociferated  that  it  was  not  war-  ^ 
ring  upon  slavery,  and  ignoring  also  the  fact  that  the  mount 
ing  tariff,  closing  the  usual  market  to  English  manufactures, 
was  a  constant  irritation.  Richard  Cobden  wrote  to  Charles 
Sumner  (December  5,  1861)  :  "You  know  how  ignorant  we 
are  of  your  history,  geography,  etc.  .  .  .  There  are  two  sub 
jects  upon  which  we  are  unanimous  and  fanatical  .  .  .  per 
sonal  freedom  and  free  trade.  In  your  case  we  see  a  mighty 
struggle,  —  on  one  side  protectionists,  on  the  other  slave 
owners.  The  protectionists  say  they  do  not  seek  to  put  down 
slavery  :  the  slave  owners  say  they  do  want  free  trade.  Need 
you  wonder  at  the  confusion  in  John  Bull's  head  ?"  Punch 
put  the  same  dilemma :  - 

1  The  Proclamation  had  not  made  slavery  subsequently  illegal.  But  the  great 
Amendment  runs  —  after  the  phrasing  of  the  Northwest  Ordinance  —  "  Neither 
slavery  nor  involuntary  servitude  .  .  .  shall  exist  within  the  United  States  or  any 
place  subject  to  their  jurisdiction."  The  contrast  between  this  actual  Thirteenth 
Amendment  and  the  proposed  "Thirteenth  Amendment"  of  1861,  to  guarantee 
slavery  forever  against  national  interference  (page  529),  measures  part  of  the  value  of 
the  war. 


550  THE  CIVIL  WAR,   1861-1805 

"  The  South  enslaves  those  fellow  men 

Whom  we  all  love  so  dearly  : 
The  North  keeps  commerce  bound  again, 

Which  touches  us  more  nearly. 
Thus  a  divided  duty  we 

Perceive  in  this  hard  matter  : 
Free  trade  or  sable  brother  free  ? 

O,  won't  we  choose  the  latter?" 

When  President  Lincoln  proclaimed  a  blockade  of  South 

ern  ports,  France  and  England  at  once  called  the  attention 

of  their  citizens  to  that  proclamation  and  ordered  a 

"beiiiger-      strict  neutrality  between  the  two  "  belligerents." 


reco  nized  ^^s  worc^  incensed  the  North,  which  had  been 
claiming  that  the  Confederates  were  merely 
"  rioters."  The  English  and  French  acknowledgment  of  the 
belligerency  of  the  South  was  perhaps  made  with  unnecessary 
haste  ;  but  it  is  now  generally  agreed  that  such  action  afforded 
no  real  cause  for  complaint.  It  granted  to  the  Confederates 
certain  rights  for  their  privateers  in  English  and  French 
ports,  which,  as  mere  rioters  or  pirates,  they  would  not  have 
enjoyed  ;  but  it  was  not  at  all  a  recognition  of  the  Confederacy 
as  an  independent  nation. 

There  was  real  danger  of  this  catastrophe  —  which  would 
almost  certainly  have  been  fatal  to  the  Union.  After  Bull 
Run,  English  society  generally  believed  that  the  South  could 
not  be  conquered,  and  was  more  and  more  inclined  to  look 
upon  the  contest  as  one  between  empire  and  self-government. 
"In  any  case,  since  the  South  must  win  in  the  end,"  said 
they,  "the  sooner  the  matter  is  ended  the  better,  so  that  our 
cotton  mills  may  turn  their  spindles  again  and  the  danger  of 
social  revolution  from  starving  workmen  here  be  removed." 
Moreover,  now  that  it  seemed  safe,  the  governing  aristocracy 
of  that  time  1  was  glad  to  show  sympathy  for  the  corre 
sponding  aristocracy  of  the  South.  Said  Gladstone  —  not 
yet  fully  out  of  his  Tory  period  —  "Jefferson  Davis  and 
other  leaders  .  .  .  have  made  an  army  ;  they  are  making  a 
navy;  they  have  made  .  .  .  a  nation."  Still,  so  far  as  any 

1  This  was  before  the  Reform  Bill  of  1867,  which  first  made  England  a  democracy. 


ENGLAND'S  ATTITUDE  551 

act  of  the  English  government  is  concerned,  the  North  had 
no  cause  whatever  for  offense  until  November,  1861. 

Then  came  an  incident  which  nearly  led  to   war  with 
England.     The  Confederacy  appointed  James  Mason  and 
John  Slidell  commissioners  to  England  and  France,   The  Mason- 
to  secure  recognition  and  alliance.     These  gentle-  siideii 
men  ran  the  blockade  to  Havana,  and  there  took  mcident 
passage  on  the  English  steamship  Trent.     November  8,  an 
overzealous  captain  of  an  American  man-of-war  overhauled 
the  Trent  and  took  the  two  commissioners  from  her  decks. 

The  North  burst  into  applause,  though  Lincoln  and  a  few 
other  cool  heads  saw  that  the  government  was  placed  in  the 
wrong  by  this  violation  of  a  right  of  neutral  vessels  for  which 
America  had  so  long  been  ready  to  fight.  England,  too, 
had  always  prided  herself  particularly  on  affording  refuge 
to  political  offenders  from  other  lands ;  and  there  was  now 
a  burst  of  sincere  indignation  in  that  country.  The  govern 
ment  used  the  opportunity  to  go  far  in  showing  Southern 
sympathies.  Troops  were  hurried  off  for  Canada,  and  a 
peremptory  demand  was  made  for  the  surrender  of  the 
prisoners  and  for  an  apology  —  softened  though  the  form  of 
the  note  was,  from  the  original  draft,  through  the  influence 
of  the  Prince  Consort  and  the  Queen.  After  unwise  delay, 
due  to  fear  of  popular  feeling,  the  American  government 
yielded.  The  people  of  the  North  acquiesced ;  but  their 
bitterness  toward  England  was  intensified. 

In  another  incident  of  more  serious  nature,  the  English 
government  was  deeply  at  fault.  In  the  early  years  of  the 
war,  the  South  succeeded  in  getting  a  few  cruisers  The 
to  sea,  to  prey  upon  Northern  commerce.  The  Alabama 
most  famous  one  never  entered  a  Confederate  port.  This 
vessel  was  built  in  England.  The  United  States  minister 
there,  Charles  Francis  Adams,  warned  Lord  Russell  of  the 
purpose  of  the  vessel  as  it  neared  completion ;  but  Russell 
was  blandly  incredulous,  and  trusted  to  reports  of  his  subor 
dinates  and  to  the  assurances  of  the  builders  that  the  vessel 
was  a  peaceful  one.  Thus  the  Alabama  was  allowed  to  escape 
to  sea,  where  she  took  on  her  armament  and  soon  became  a 


552  THE  CIVIL  WAR,   1861-1865 

terror  to  the  Northern  merchant  marine—  until  she  was  over 
taken  and  sunk  by  the  Kearsarge.  The  North  was  inclined 
to  believe  that  the  English  government  acted  in  bad  faith. 
But  it  is  now  clear  that  Russell  was  guilty  only  of  culpable 
negligence  —  of  which  he  afterward  made  public  confession, 
and  for  which  his  country  afterward  atoned  so  far  as  possible 
by  paying  the  "Alabama  claims." 

More  serious  still  would  have  been  the  barely  defeated  proj 
ect  of  the  South  to  build  two  ironclad  rams  in  England, 
with  which  to  break  the  blockade.  These  formidable  vessels 
were  nearly  ready  for  sea;  and  Mr.  Adams'  remonstrances 
apparently  had  moved  Lord  Russell  only  to  ineffectual  pre 
cautions.  At  the  last  moment,  Adams  wrote  to  Russell, 
"It  would  be  superfluous  for  me  to  point  out  to  your  lordship 
that  this  is  war."  But  Russell  had  already  awakened,  and 
had  just  given  effectual  orders  to  seize  the  vessels. 

France,  too,  felt  the  lack  of  cotton,  though  far  less  than 
England,  and  the  Emperor  Napoleon  III  would  have  liked 
French  to  see  the  Union  broken  up,  so  as  to  give  him  a  free 
sympathies  hanci  m  Mexico  (page  565  below) .  Accordingly,  he 
made  specific  proposals  to  the  English  government  to  join 
hands  in  recognizing  the  South  and  breaking  the  blockade. 
These  repeated  overtures  were  always  refused  by  England.  With 
perfect  right,  Cobden  wrote  to  Sumner  (Morley's  Cobden, 
II,  408)  :  "You  must  not  forget  that  we  have  been  the  only 
obstacle  to  what  would  have  been  almost  a  European  rec 
ognition  of  the  South." 

And  after  the  Emancipation  Proclamation  had  put  the 
North  in  the  true  light  in  the  matter  of  slavery,  all  English 
hostility  was  hushed.  English  workingmen  thronged  great 
public  meetings  to  voice  loud  enthusiasm  for  the  Union ; 
and  Cobden  wrote  jubilantly  that  any  ministry  which 
should  dare  to  commit  any  act  unfriendly  to  America  would 
be  instantly  driven  from  power. 

The  North,  then,  had  some  cause  to  blame  the  govern 
ment  and  the  aristocracy  of  England.  It  had  greater 
cause,  not  always  duly  recognized,  for  deep  gratitude  to 
the  sound  heart  of  the  English  masses,  who  felt  dimly  that 


AND  ITS  COST  553 

the  Union  was  fighting  slavery,  even  while  Unionists  denied 
it  loudly,  and  who  therefore  gave  the  North  a  heroic  sup 
port  through  cruel  privations  — •  in  many  ways  as 
severe  as  those  borne  by  Americans.  Says  Von 
Hoist  of  this  matter :  "  The  attitude  of  the  Eng-  to  English 
lish  workingmen  is  one  of  the  great  deeds  in  the 
world's  history."  They  stood  nobly  by  the  cause 
of  democracy  and  free  labor,  as  their  own  cause ;  and  their 
attitude  was  so  determined  that,  even  though  they  had  no 
votes,  their  aristocratic  government  did  not  venture  to  take 
offensive  action  against  America.  It  should  be  remembered, 
too,  that,  in  the  darkest  hour,  there  were  not  wanting 
English  leaders,  like  Richard  Cobden,  John  Bright,  and  John 
Stuart  Mill,  to  give  enthusiastic  support  to  the  North. 

The  war  cost  more  than  700,000  lives,  —  the  loss  nearly 
even  between  North  and  South.  "The  nation  was  lastingly 
impoverished  by  that  awful  hemorrhage."  As  The  cost 
many  men  more  had  their  lives  sadly  shortened  of  the  War 
or  rendered  miserable  by  disease  or  wounds.  Other  darkened 
lives,  in  homes  from  which  the  light  had  gone  out,  cannot  be 
computed.  Nor  can  we  count  the  heaviest  cost  of  all,  the 
lowering  of  moral  tone,  and  the  habits  of  vice,  that  came  from 
life  in  camp  and  barracks.1  In  money,  the  war  cost  the  Union 
government  about  three  and  a  half  billions,  nearly  three  bil 
lions  of  which  remained  as  a  huge  national  debt  to  plague  the 
next  generation.  The  destruction  of  property,  principally 
in  the  South,  amounted  to  nearly  as  much  more. 

Still,  this  expenditure  of  blood  and  treasure  was  well  worth 
while.     The  war  struck  shackles  from  four  million  men.     It 
ended  forever  the  ideas  of  constitutional  nullifica-  And  its 
tion  and  of  peaceful  secession.     It  decided,  beyond  gains 
further  appeal,  that  the  United  States  is  a  Nation,  not  a  con 
federacy.     It  was  the  means  whereby  the  more  progressive  por- 

1  The  women  and  other  non-combatants  of  both  South  and  North  spent  them 
selves  nobly  in  hospital  service ;  but  science  did  not  know  how  to  heal  or  to  protect, 
as  it  does  now.  And  the  splendid  work  of  our  many  organizations  in  the  World 
War  to  provide  material  comforts  and  mental  recreation  and  uplift  was  almost 
wholly  lacking. 


554  THE   CIVIL  WAR,    1861-1865 

tion  of  the  country  had  to  force  its  advanced  political  thought  and 
its  better  labor  system  upon  the  weaker,  stationary  portion. 
It  prevented  the  break-up  of  the  country  into  squabbling 
communities,  to  be  engaged  in  incessant  bickerings  over 
trade  and  boundaries,  and  it  preserved  the  vast  breadth  of 
the  continent  for  peace.  It  demonstrated  to  skeptical 
European  aristocracies  that  the  great  Republic  was  not 
"a  bubble,"  but  "the  most  solid  fact  in  history," 

One  part  of  the  cost  is  yet  to  be  counted.  April  14, 
1865,  while  the  North  was  still  blazing  with  illuminations 
The  death  over  the  surrender  of  Lee's  army,  it  was  plunged 
of  Lincoln  jn^-o  glOpm  by  the  assassination  of  Lincoln.  The 
great  President  was  murdered  by  a  crazed  actor,  a  sympa 
thizer  of  the  South.  No  man  was  left  to  stand  between  North 
and  South  as  mediator,  and  to  bind  up  the  wounds  of  the 
Nation  with  great-hearted  pity  and  all-sufficing  influence,  as 
Lincoln  could  have  done.  His  death  was  an  incomparable 
loss  to  the  South.  It  added  fierce  flame  to  the  spirit  of  ven 
geance  at  the  North,  and  it  explains  in  part  the  blunders  and 
sins  of  the  Republican  party  in  the  "Reconstruction"  that 
followed  the  war. 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

"...  that  this  nation,  under  God,  shall  have  a  new  birth  of  freedom, 
and  that  government  of  the  people,  by  the  people,  and  for  the  people, 
shall  not  perish  from  the  earth. " 


CHAPTER  XXXV 

RECONSTRUCTION 

PEACE  brought  new  problems.     The  North  paid  off  its 
million  men  under  arms,  and  sent  them  to  their  homes  at 
the  rate  of  one  or  two  hundred  thousand  a  month.  Return 
At  the  close  of  1865,  only  some  fifty  thousand  re-  of  the 
mained,  to  garrison  the  South.      The  disbanded  £ 
"old  soldiers"  found  place  in  the  industry  of  the  country 
without  disturbing  the  usual  order.     In  part  this  remarkable 
fact  was  due  to  "free  land."     Many  thousands  who  saw  no 
opening  in  their  old  homes  became  "homesteaders"  in  the 
West.     The  government,  too,  sharply  reduced  internal  taxes. 
At  the  same  time,  after  1869,  it  cut  down  the  huge  national 
debt  resolutely  —  so  that  by  1890  half  of  it  had  been  paid, 
including  the  paper  money. 

For  the  wrecked  South,  the  problems  were  infinitely  more 
difficult.  Its  "old  soldiers"  toiled  homeward  painfully, 
mostly  on  foot,  from  Northern  prison  camps  and  from 
surrendered  armies.  In  some  districts,  remote  from  the 
march  of  the  Union  armies,  there  was  still  abundance  of  food, 
with  the  Negroes  at  work  in  the  fields ;  but  over  wide  areas 
the  returned  soldier  found  his  home  in  ashes,  his  stock  carried 
off,  his  family  scattered,  the  labor  system  utterly  gone. 
Many  an  aristocrat,  who  in  April  had  ruled  a  veteran  regi 
ment,  in  July  was  hunting  desperately  for  a  mule,1  that  he 
might  plow  an  acre  or  two,  to  raise  food  wherewith  to  keep 
his  delicately  nurtured  family  from  starvation.  The  destruc 
tion  of  bridges  and  tearing  up  of  railroads  left  the  various 
districts  isolated;  and  industrial  life  had  to  be  built  up 
again  from  primitive  conditions.  No  praise  is  too  great 

1  At  Lee's  surrender,  General  Grant,  with  characteristic  good  sense  and  gener 
osity,  had  told  the  men  to  keep  their  horses,  which,  said  he,  they  would  need  for  the 
spring  work.  This  practice,  followed  by  other  Union  commanders,  lightened  in 
some  slight  degree  the  suffering  of  the  South. 

555 


556  RECONSTRUCTION,   1865-1876 

for  the  quiet  heroism  with  which  the  men  of  the  South  set 
themselves  to  this  crushing  task. 

Before  the  end  of  the  war,  the  Negroes  had  begun  to  flock 
to  the  Federal  camps ;  and,  in  March,  1865,  Congress  had 
The  found  it  necessary  to  establish  a  "Freedman's 

Negroes  Bureau,"  -to  feed  these  helpless  multitudes,  to 
start  schools  for  them,  and  to  stand  to  them  in  the  place  of 
guardian.  This  organization  rendered  great  service  ;  but,  in 
spite  of  all  it  could  do,  hundreds  of  thousands  of  ex-slaves 
drifted  aimlessly  about  the  country  for  months.  To  many  of 
them,  freedom  meant  chiefly  idleness.  Others  had  caught  up 
a  strange  delusion  that  the  government  was  going  to  give  to 
each  one  "forty  acres  and  a  mule."  When  starvation  finally 
drove  them  back  to  desultory  work,  the  habits  they  had 
formed  led  to  much  violence  and  crime. 

The  problems  for  the  South  were  (1)  to  find  food  for  its 
people ;  (2)  to  protect  and  control  and  uplift  the  Negro  and 
The  bring  him  back  into  the  industrial  system  ;  (3)  to 

problems  build  new  State  governments  ;  and  (4)  to  restore 
of  the  these  reconstructed  States  to  their  old  relation  to 

the  Union..  Unfortunately,  in  practice,  the  second 
and  third  of  these  problems  had  to  depend  upon  the  fourth ; 
and  this  problem  the  victorious  North,  after  the  assassination 
of  Lincoln  and  the  return  of  its  emaciated  prisoners,  was  in  no 
mood  to  solve  in  the  best  way.  For  twelve  years  (1865-1876) , 
though  war  had  ceased,  a  "state  of  war"  continued.  The 
South  was  garrisoned  by  Federal  troops,  and  much  of  it  was 
ruled  by  conquering  generals  as  though  it  were  a  hostile 
country.  Political  organization  was  more  completely  wrecked 
even  than  the  industrial  system.  The  military  government 
preserved  order ;  but  civil  liberties  were  in  doubt,  and  civil 
government  was  lacking. 

Lincoln  had  held  that  the  "States"  could  not  go  out  of 
the  Union,  and  that  their  normal  relations  to  the  Union 
Lincoln's  were  merely  interrupted  temporarily  by  illegal 
plan  for  re-  "combinations  of  individuals."  Even  while  the 
1  war  was  in  progress,  he  had  tried  to  "reconstruct" 
such  States  as  had  been  occupied  by  the  Union  armies. 


ANDREW  JOHNSON  AND  CONGRESS  557 

"Louisiana,"  said  he,  in  1862,  when  the  Confederate  armies 
had  been  driven  from  that  State,  ''has  nothing  to  do  now 
but  to  take  her  place  in  the  Union  as  it  was  —  barring  the 
broken  eggs."  In  1863  he  issued  a  proclamation  of  amnesty 
for  all  Southerners  (with  a  few  specified  exceptions)  who 
would  take  an  oath  of  allegiance  to  the  Union;  and  he 
promised  to  recognize  any  State  government  set  up  by 
such  persons,  - —  if  only  they  made  10  per  cent  of  the  number 
of  voters  in  1860. 

But  more  "radical"  Republicans  began  to  fear  that  the 
"rebels,"  getting  back  so  easily  into  the  Union,  might  win 
control  of  the  Federal  government  and  undo  the  results  of 
the  war.  So  in  July,  1864,  Congress  passed  the  "^avis- 
Wade  bill,"  to  make  the  process  of  reconstruction  more 
difficult  and  to  place  control  of  it  in  Congress.  Lin 
coln  killed  this  bill  by  a  pocket  veto ;  and  during  the  sum 
mer  recess  of  Congress,  upon  his  own  responsibility,  he 
"  recognized"  the  "ten  per  cent  governments"  in  Arkansas, 
Louisiana,  and  Tennessee.  Later,  like  action  was  taken  for 
Virginia.  But  Representatives  and  Senators  from  these 
States  had  not  been  admitted  by  Congress  when  Vice  Presi 
dent  Johnson  became  President. 

Andrew  Johnson  was  the  son  of  "Poor  White"  parents, 
and  had  learned  to  write  only  after  marriage,  from  his  wife. 
His  youth  was  passed  as  an  apprentice  to  a  tailor,  and  he 
afterward  followed  that  trade  (page  437).  He  Andrew 
had  great  native  ability  and  a  rugged  integrity.  J°hnson 
Even  in  the  aristocratic  South,  before  the  war,  he  had  risen 
from  his  tailor's  bench  to  the  governorship  of  his  State  and 
to  a  seat  in  Congress.  He  had  never  been  a  Republican ; 
but  he  had  been  a  devoted  "Union  man"  in  Tennessee,  and 
in  1863-1864  he  had  shown  courage  and  force  of  character 
as  military  governor  there  under  Lincoln.  The  Republican 
National  Convention  of  1864  nominated  him  for  the  Vice 
Presidency  in  recognition  of  the  nation's  debt  to  the  "War 
Democrats."  But,  with  all  his  ability  and  honesty,  Johnson 
never  made  good  the  defects  of  his  early  training.  He  was 
unduly  pugnacious,  sadly  lacking  in  tact  and  good  taste, 


558  RECONSTRUCTION,   1865-1876 

and  much  given  to  loud  boasting  and  to  abusive  speech. 
Always  bitter  toward  opponents,  he  had  been  particularly 
bitter  toward  "rebels,"  so  that  Radical  Republicans,  though 
shocked  at  Lincoln's  death,  felt  that  the  country  was  now 
safer.  As  soon  as  Johnson  had  taken  the  oath  of  office,  a 
committee  of  the  Republican  extremists  called  upon  him. 
Senator  "Ben"  Wade  greeted  him:  "Johnson,  we  have 
faith  in  you.  By  the  gods,  there  will  be  no  trouble  now  in 
running  the  government." 

Soon,  however,  Johnson  amazed  and  disappointed  his 
"Radical"  friends  by  taking  up  reconstruction  just  where 
Adopts  Lincoln  had  left  it  —  but  with  infinitely  less 
Lincoln's  chance  of  success.  Before  Congress  met  in  De 
cember,  he  "recognized"  State  governments  in 
all  the  remaining  States  of  the  old  Confederacy,  essentially 
on  Lincoln's  plan.  In  each  State  a  convention  repealed  the 
ordinance  of  secession,  repudiated  any  share  in  the  Con 
federate  war  debt,  and  adopted  a  constitution.  Under  this 
constitution,  the  people  chose  a  legislature  and  a  gov 
ernor.  The  legislature  was  required,  before  the  State 
government  was  "recognized,"  to  ratify  the  Thirteenth 
amendment.  Thereupon  President  Johnson  proclaimed 
civil  government  fully  restored.  The  legislatures  then 
passed  laws  to  restore  industry,  and  chose  Senators  and 
Representatives  for  Congress  —  who,  however,  were  never 
to  take  their  seats. 

For  the  North  was  taking  alarm.  In  the  "reconstructed" 
States,  the  governors  and  Congressmen  were  ex-Confederate 
generals.  Such  men  were  the  only  natural  leaders  of  their 
people ;  but  the  North  could  not  understand  this  fact,  nor 
could  it  believe  that  these  "rebel  brigadiers"  had  accepted 
the  result  of  the  war  in  good  faith. 

Much  cause  for  irritation,  too,  was  found  in  the  laws  of  the 
reconstructed  legislatures  about  the  freedmen.  In  at 
least  three  States,  a  magistrate  might  arrest  an  idle  Negro 
as  a  vagrant,  fine  him,  and  sell  him  into  service  to  work 
out  the  fine.  In  some  States  a  like  penalty  was  imposed 
for  petty  larceny;  and  a  common  feature  of  these  "Black 


ALARM  AT  THE  NORTH  559 

Codes"  was  the  provision  that  a  court  might  "apprentice" 
Negro   minors.      The    Southerner    felt    sure    that    the    de 
moralized  Blacks  could  not  be  kept  in  order  or  The  North 
made  self-supporting  without  such  laws ;  and  most  demands 
of  this  legislation  is  approved  to-day  by  Northern  s^th^ve 
scholars.1      But    at    the    moment    it    seemed    to  the  Negroes 
the  North  a  defiant  attempt  to  reenslave  "per-  votl 
sons    of    color."     Northern    opinion,    therefore,   demanded 
that  all  the  "Presidential  reconstruction"   should  be  un 
done,  until  the  Southern  States  should  repeal  the  "Black 
laws"   and  grant  the  franchise  to  the  Blacks,  —  to  enable 
those  wards  of  the  nation  to  protect  themselves. 

Lincoln  had  advised  his  reconstructed  governments 
that  they  would  do  well  to  give  the  franchise  to  Negroes 
who  had  fought  for  the  Union  or  who  could  pass  an  educa 
tional  test?  and  President  Johnson  repeatedly  urged  a 
like  policy.  But  no  one  of  the  reconstructed  legislatures 
paid  attention  to  such  counsel.  For  this  there  is  little 
wonder.  Only  six  Northern  States  allowed  the  Negro 
to  vote  at  this  time,  and  in  this  same  year  (1865),  State 
conventions  in  Wisconsin,  Connecticut,  and  Minnesota 
refused  the  privilege.  Again,  in  1867-1868,  Minnesota, 
Michigan,  Ohio,  and  Kansas,  by  popular  vote,  rejected 
constitutional  amendments  providing  for  Negro  suffrage. 

In  Congress,  Senator  Sumner  now  held  that  the  Southern 
States,  by  secession,  had  "committed  State-suicide"  and 
had  reverted  to  the  position  of  Territories,  subject 

.  ~  i  ,      .  '  J  ,        Charles 

of  course  to  Congressional  regulation.  In  the  simmer  and 
lower  House,  Thaddeus  Stevens  insisted  upon  the 
more  extreme  view  that  the  South  was  a  "con 
quered  province,"  so  that  its  people  had  no  claim  even  to 
civil  rights.  Sumner  was  an  unselfish  idealist,  but  un- 

1  "This  legislation,  far  from  embodying  any  spirit  of  defiance  towards  the 
North  .  .  .  was  in  the  main  a  conscientious  and  straightforward  attempt  to  bring  some 
sort  of  order  out  of  the  social  and  economic  chaos"  —  Dunning,  Reconstruction  ("  Amer 
ican  Nation"  series),  57-58.  "The  trend  of  legislation  .  .  .  was  distinctly  favor 
able  to  the  Negro."  —  Rhodes,  VI,  27. 


560  RECONSTRUCTION,   1865-1876 

practical  and  bigoted,  with  the  one  idea  of  doing  justice 
to  the  Negro.  Stevens  was  an  unscrupulous  politician 
and  a  vindictive  partisan,  determined  to  entrench  Re 
publican  rule  by  Negro  majorities  in  Southern  States,  and 
not  averse  incidentally  to  punishing  "rebels."  The  spirit 
of  reckless  retribution  which  stained  the  National  legislation 
of  the  next  months  was  due  mainly  to  his  harsh  influence. 
And  more  and  more,  as  the  contest  progressed,  the  Re 
publican  majority  in  Congress  was  actuated  also  by  a  desire 
to  humiliate  the  President  —  and  moved  step  by  step  to 
a  recklessness  that  is  strangely  like  that  manifested  in  a  like 
struggle  at  the  close  of  the  World  War. 

At  the  first  roll  call  of  the  new  Congress,  the  clerk,  under 
Stevens'  direction,  omitted  the  reconstructed  States,  so 
And  that  their  representatives  were  not  recognized. 

Congres-  Later,  the  question  of  the  readmission  of  those 
reconstruc-  States  to  the  Union  was  referred  to  a  joint  com- 
tion  mittee  of  the  two  Houses,  —  which  then  held  the 

matter  skillfully  in  abeyance.  Meantime,  over  the  Presi 
dent's  veto,  a  Civil  Rights  Bill  placed  the  civil  equality  of 
the  Negro  directly  under  the  protection  of  the  Federal 
courts  —  rather  than  of  the  State  courts.  Then,  to  make 
the  same  principle  still  more  secure,  Congress  submitted  to 
the  States  the  Fourteenth  Amendment. 

This  measure  held  out  to  the  South  an  inducement  to  give 
the  suffrage  to  the  Negro  —  in  the  provision  that  if  a  State 
denied  the  suffrage  to  any  citizens,  its  representation  in  Con 
gress  might  be  correspondingly  reduced.  But  it  also  dis 
qualified  from  office  large  classes  of  leading  Southerners 
such  as  made  up  the  reconstructed  governments.  Accord 
ingly  it  was  promptly  rejected  by  Southern  legislatures. 

Congress  then  (March  2,  1867)  began  its  own  system  of 
Reconstruction.  It  divided  the  old  Confederacy  (except 
Military  Tennessee,  which  had  ratified  the  amendment) 
"d®  mtofive  military  districts.  Each  district  was  placed 

under  an  army  general,  who,  in  practice,  set  aside  at  will 
the  laws  of  the  existing  Southern  legislatures,  overruled  the 
decisions  of  courts,  appointed  municipal  authorities,  and 


NEGRO  RULE  IN  THE  SOUTH  561 

aimed  in  general  to  exercise  a  minute  paternal  despotism. 
This  military  rule  was  to  continue  until  the  following  process 
should  be  complete:  (1)  Each  commander  was  to  register 
the  voters  in  each  State  in  his  district,  including  the  Negroes 
and  excluding  certain  large  classes  of  leading  ex-Confederates. 
(2)  State  conventions,  chosen  by  these  voters,  must  ratify  the 
Fourteenth  amendment  and  (3)  adopt  new  State  consti 
tutions,  —  which  must  be  satisfactory  to  Congress  and 
which,  in  particular,  must  provide  for  future  Negro  suffrage. 
(4)  These  constitutions  must  then  be  ratified  by  the  registered 
voters.  (5)  A  State  which  complied  with  these  requirements 
might  be  readmitted  to  the  Union  by  Congress. 

By  June,  1868,  six  States  had  been  reconstructed  on  this 
basis.  Virginia,  Mississippi,  Georgia,  and  Texas  preferred 
military  rule  for  three  years  more.  Meantime  Congress 
added  the  Fifteenth  amendment  to  the  requirements  for  re- 
admission. 

Annoyed  by  Johnson's  futile  veto  messages,  Congress  now 
determined  to  impeach  him.     Johnson  had  been  foolish  and 
coarse ;    but  he  had  administered  his  high  office  Attempt  to 
with  scrupulous  fidelity,  and  had  enforced  vigor-  impeach 
ously  even  the  laws  he  most  disapproved.     The 
impeachment  was  a  frank  attempt  to  depose  him  because 
he  differed  with  the  majority  of  Congress.     It  failed  (May, 
1868)  for  want  of  one  vote;    but  every  Northern  Senator 
who  voted  against  this  partisan  degradation  of  the  presi 
dency  lost  his  seat  at  the  first  subsequent  election.     The 
North  was  even  more  mad  than  Congress. 

A   few   months   later,   the   Republicans   elected   General 
Grant  to  the  Presidency  in  an  enthusiastic  campaign,  by 
214  electoral  votes   to   80.     Still   in   the  popular  Election 
vote,  Grant  had  a  majority  of  only  300,000  out  of  of  Grant 
6,000,000.     Part  of  the  Southern  States,  too,  were  still  un 
reconstructed,  and    had   no  vote;    while    the    others  were 
controlled  by  Republican  "carpetbaggers." 

Meantime,  the  atrocious  Reconstruction  Acts  had  been 
followed  by  anarchy  and  misgovernment  in  the  South.  In 
a  few  weeks,  thousands  of  Northern  adventurers,  drawn  by 


562  RECONSTRUCTION,   1865-1876 

scent  of  plunder,  had  thronged  thither  to  exploit  the  ignorant 
Negro  vote  and  to  organize  it  as  the  Republican  party.1 
Negro  These  "carpetbaggers,"  joined  by  a  few  even  more 

11116  detested  "scalawags"   (Southern  Whites,  largely 

of  the  former  overseer  class),  with  grossly  ignorant  ex-slaves, 
made  up  the  bulk  of  the  constitutional  conventions  and  of 
the  State  legislatures  that  followed.  Says  Woodrow  Wilson, 
"A  carnival  of  public  crime  set  in  under  the  forms  of  law." 
Irresponsible  or  rascally  legislatures  ruined  the  war-impover 
ished  South  over  again  by  stupendous  taxes,  bearing  mainly 
on  the  property  of  the  disfranchised  Whites.  In  Mississippi 
a  fifth  of  the  total  area  of  the  State  was  sold  for  unpaid  taxes. 
In  New  Orleans  the  rate  of  taxation  rose  to  6  per  cent,  which 
meant  confiscation.  Enormous  State  debts,  too,  were 
piled  up,  to  burden  the  future.  Crime  against  individuals 
was  rampant ;  and  vicious  Negroes  heaped  indignities  upon 
former  masters.  History  has  no  parallel  to  this  legal 
revolution  whereby  a  civilized  society  was  subjected  to 
ruin  and  insult  by  an  ignorant  barbarism  led  by  brutal 
and  greedy  renegades.  Says  Rhodes  (History,  VI,  35)  : 
"Stevens'  Reconstruction  Acts,  ostensibly  in  the  interests 
of  freedom,  were  an  attack  on  Civilization" 

The  Southern  Whites,  it  should  have  been  foreseen,  would 
soon  overthrow  this  vile  supremacy,  or  perish.  Peaceful 
And  the  and  legal  means  for  preserving  White  civilization 
Ku-Klux  there  were  none ;  open  rebellion  against  Negro 
domination,  while  it  was  supported  by  Federal  bayonets, 
was  equally  impossible ;  and  so  the  Whites  had  recourse  to 
the  only  available  methods,  —  which  were  very  deplorable 
ones.  Says  William  Garrett  Brown  (Lower  South),  "Never 
before  had  an  end  so  clearly  worth  fighting  for  been  so 
clearly  unattainable  by  any  good  means."  Secret  Ku-Klux- 
Klans  intimidated  Negro  majorities  by  mysterious  warn 
ings  ;  and  midnight  patrols  of  white-robed,  masked  horsemen 
flogged  many  men  and  hanged  some.  By  the  close  of  1870, 

1  A  favorite  device,  when  one  was  needed,  was  to  show  the  illiterate  and  credulous 
Negroes  an  "order"  purporting  to  be  signed  by  General  Grant,  commanding  them 
to  vote  the  Republican  ticket. 


CONGRESS  AND    THE  JUDICIARY  563 

the  North  had  in  law  imposed  its  system  of  reconstruction 
upon  the  South :  in  actual  fact,  the  South  was  rapidly  car 
rying  out  a  counter-revolution. 

In  1872  public  feeling  at  the  North  compelled  Congress 
to  restore  political  rights  to  the  ex-Confederates  except  for  a 
few  leaders,  and  the  union  of  the  Whites  in  one  Restoration 
party  gave  them  a  majority  in  most  States  over  of  political 
the  Negroes.     Thereafter  they  used  little  violence ;  nghts 
but  they  continued  to  exclude  most  Negroes  from  the  polls 
by  threats  of  non-employment  or  by  persuasion  or  by  vague 
intimidation.     For  a  while,  the  Federal  government  secured 
the  victory  of  Carpet-bag  State  governments  by  giving  them 
the  use  of  Federal  troops  at  the  elections ;  but  this  process 
became  increasingly  distasteful  to  President  Grant  and  to 
the  country.     By  1875,    Tennessee,   Virginia,  Georgia,  and 
North  Carolina  had  reverted  to   White  rule;  and  the  other 
Southern  States  did  so  in  the  election  of  1876  or  as  a  result 
of  the  settlement  following  that  election. 

Throughout  "Reconstruction,"  Congress  showed  a  high 
handed  determination  to  override  the  Judiciary,  as  it  over 
rode  the  Executive,  whenever  necessary  to  carry  Congress 
its  point.     It  had  suspended  the  writ  of  Habeas  and  the 
Corpus  in   the   North   during  the  war,  and  had  ^uc 
authorized   the    punishment   of    suspected    "rebel    sympa 
thizers"   by   military   courts.     While    the  war    lasted,    the 
Federal  judiciary  had  been  unwilling  to  interfere  with  these 
courts  martial,  dangerous  as  they  were  to  private  liberty ; 
but  in  1866  the  Supreme  Court  did  at  last  declare  that  all 
such  military  commissions  for  the  trial  of  citizens,  in  dis 
tricts    where    the    ordinary    courts    were    open,   had    been 
unconstitutional. 

The  "Radical"  majority  in  Congress  feared  that  the  Court 
would  go  on  to  upset  their  program  for  military  rule  in  the 
South,  and  raved  wildly  against  the  decision.  Stevens  at 
once  introduced  a  bill  to  make  it  impossible  for  the  Court 
to  set  aside  laws  of  Congress  thereafter  except  by  a  unanimous 
vote.  The  bill  was  not  pressed  to  a  vote,  but  was  held  over 


564  RECONSTRUCTION,   1865-1876 

the  Judiciary  as  a  threat.  The  Court,  accordingly,  grew 
cautious.  When  President  Johnson's  reconstructed  State 
governments  appealed  to  it  for  protection  against  the  military 
rule  set  over  them  by  the  Reconstruction  Acts,  it  declared 
it  had  no  jurisdiction  in  such  "political  cases."  At  a  later 
period,  however,  in  the  famous  "Slaughter  House  cases" 
of  1883,  it  did  take  from  the  Negroes  the  security  for  civil 
equality  which  the  Fourteenth  amendment  had  been  in 
tended  to  give  them.  Since  that  time  the  social  relations 
of  the  Blacks  have  been  regulated  by  State  governments. 

The  "Legal  Tender  decisions"  showed  another  way  in 
which  the  Supreme  Court  might  be  subject  to  control  in  times 
The  Legal  °^  strong  popular  feeling.  The  Legal  Tender  Act 
Tender  of  1862  (page  532)  had  made  "greenbacks"  lawful 
pay  even  for  debts  contracted  before  the  passage  of 
the  law.  This  provision  of  the  law  the  Court  declared  un 
constitutional,  February  7,  1870.  Chief  Justice  Chase,  who 
as  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  had  devised  the  law,  wrote  the 
decision;  and  the  vote  stood  four  to  three.  But  one  Jus 
tice  had  died  just  before,  and  Congress  had  provided  for 
one  additional  new  member.  President  Grant  now  filled 
both  places  —  the  day  this  decision  was  handed  down.  A 
new  case  was  promptly  brought  before  the  new  Court. 
The  new  appointees  voted  with  the  former  minority,  and 
the  law  was  upheld,  five  to  four. 

Loud  complaint  was  made  —  even  by  the  Chief  Justice  - 
that  the  President  and  Senate  had  "packed  the  Court"  to 
secure  this  reversal.  In  the  grossest  form,  this  accusation 
was  certainly  untrue.  The  nominations  had  been  settled 
upon  before  the  first  decision  was  made  public.  But  the 
country  was  sharply  divided  upon  the  issue,  and  the  stand 
of  the  nominees  on  the  matter  was  known  before  they  were 
confirmed.  The  rising  labor  parties  charged  that  the 
appointment  was  influenced,  in  part  at  least,  by  great 
corporations  whose  long-term  bonds,  about  to  expire,  would 
have  had  to  be  paid  in  gold  under  the  first  decision,  but 
which  they  now  paid  in  the  depreciated  greenbacks  — 
gaining  millions  for  corporation  coffers. 


THE  ALABAMA  ARBITRATION  565 

The   Reconstruction   period    saw   three    important    inci 
dents  connected  with  foreign  relations. 

1.  In  Johnson's  administration,  the  United  States  bought 
from  Russia,  for  $7,200,000,  the  immensely  rich  realm  of 
Alaska  —  then  valued  mainly  for  its  furs. 

2.  The  same  administration  victoriously  vindicated  the 
Monroe  Doctrine.     During  our  war,  England,  France,  and 
Spain  had  united  in  a  military  "demonstration," 

to  secure  from  Mexico  the  payment  of  debts  due  withdraws 
their  citizens.     England  and  Spain  soon  withdrew  from. 
from  the  movement  because  it  became  plain  that 
Napoleon  III  of  France  was   aiming  at  much   more  than 
collection   of   debts.       Then   Napoleon    established    Maxi 
milian,  an  Austrian  Archduke,  as  Emperor  of  Mexico,  and 
maintained  him  there  by  a  French  army,  in  spite  of  vigorous 
protests  from  Washington.     At  the  close  of  the  war,  how 
ever,  American  troops  were  massed  on  the   Rio   Grande ; 
and  Napoleon  withdrew  his  army.     Then  the  "Emperor" 
was  captured  and  shot  by  the  Mexican  Republicans  (1867). 

3.  Much  bitterness  was  still  felt  toward  England  for  her 
government's  conduct  in  the  matter  of  the  Alabama.     But 
in  1867  a  franchise  reform  in  that   country  put  The 
power  at  last  in  the  hands  of  the  workingmen,  Alabama 
and  a  new  British  ministry  showed  a  desire  for  a 

a  fair  settlement  between  the  two  nations.  In  the  Treaty 
of  Washington  (1871),  England  apologized  gracefully  for 
any  remissness  on  her  part  in  permitting  the  Confederate 
cruiser  to  escape,  and  the  question  of  liability  for  damages 
was  submitted  to  arbitration.  A  Tribunal  of  Arbitration 
met  at  Geneva,  —  one  member  appointed  by  each  of  the 
five  governments,  the  United  States,  England,  Switzerland, 
Italy,  and  Brazil.  At  first  the  American  government 
claimed  huge  "indirect  damages"  -for  the  cost  of  pursu 
ing  the  Alabama,  the  longer  continuance  of  the  war,  and 
the  increased  rates  of  insurance  on  merchant  shipping.  The 
Tribunal  threw  out  these  claims ;  but  it  decided  that  Eng 
land  had  not  shown  "due  diligence"  in  preventing  the  sail- 


566  RECONSTRUCTION,   1865-1876 

ing  of  the  Alabama,  and  that  she  was  therefore  responsible 
for  all  damages  to  American  commerce  committed  directly 
by  that  privateer.  England  paid  to  the  United  States  the 
award  of  $15,500,000,  to  be  distributed  by  us  to  the  owners 
of  destroyed  property.  The  amount  proved  to  be  exces 
sive,  since  claimants  for  much  of  it  could  never  be  found ; 
but  the  settlement  was  honorable  to  both  nations,  and  it 
made  the  greatest  victory  up  to  that  time  for  the  principle 
of  arbitration. 


CHAPTER  XXXVI 

THE   CLOSE   OF  AN  ERA 

In  1872  the  Republicans  began  to  divide  on  the  question 
of  military  rule  in  the  South.  The  conviction  was  growing 
that  the  North  needed  its  energies  at  home.  A  The  election 
"Liberal  Republican"  Convention  nominated  ofl872 
Horace  Greeley  for  the  presidency,  on  a  platform  calling 
for  civil-service  reform  and  for  leaving  the  South  to  solve 
its  own  problems.  The  Democrats  accepted  program  and 
candidate ;  but  they  felt  no  enthusiasm  for  Greeley,  a  life 
long,  violent  opponent,  —  and  the  "regular"  Republicans 
reflected  Grant  triumphantly. 

His  second  term,  however,  proved  a  period  of  humiliation 
for  the  simple-minded  soldier.  His  confidence  was  abused 
basely  by  political  "friends,"  and  he  showed  himself  a 
babe  in  their  unscrupulous  hands.  The  public  service  had 
become  honeycombed  with  corruption.  In  1875  Benjamin 
H.  Bristow,  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  unearthed  extensive 
frauds  whereby  high  officials  had  permitted  a  "Whisky 
Ring"  to  cheat  the  government  of  millions  of  the  internal 
revenue.  Babcock,  the  President's  private  secretary,  was 
deeply  implicated,  and  Grant  showed  an  ill-advised  eager 
ness  to  save  him  from  prosecution,  while  he  allowed  the 
friends  of  the  convicted  criminals  to  drive  Bristow  from 
office.  Grant,  himself,  on  a  visit  to  St.  Louis,  had  been 
lavishly  entertained  by  a  leading  member  of  the  "ring," 
and  had  even  accepted  from  him  a  fine  span  of  horses. 

In  1876  Belknap,  Secretary  of  War,  was  found  to  have 
accepted  bribes,  year  after  year,  for  appointments  to  office 
in  the  department  of  Indian  affairs.  Of  course  the  officials 
who  paid  the  bribes  had  enriched  themselves  by  robbing 
the  Indians.  The  Democratic  House  (see  elections  of  1874, 

567 


568 


RECONSTRUCTION,   1865-1876 


below)  began  to  impeach  Belknap,  but  the  President  per 
mitted  him  to  escape  punishment  by  accepting  his  resig 
nation. 

Low,  however,  as  the  honor  of  the  government  had  fallen, 
no  one,  then  or  later,  imputed  personal  dishonesty  to  the 
uiysses  modest,  honest-minded  President.  Ulysses  S. 
Simpson  Grant  is  a  unique  figure  among  the  world's 
rulers,  and  yet  a  typical  American.  His  early  life 
was  spent  in  frontier  Ohio.  He  became  a  West  Pointer, 

graduating  with  a  rank 
midway  in  his  class.    He 
served  with  credit  in  the 
Mexican  War  (of  which 
he  strongly  disapproved, 
as  he  did  of  most  wars) , 
and    rose    from    second 
lieutenant    to    captain. 
In  1854  he  resigned  his 
commission  and  took  his 
family  to  a  small  farm 
ten  miles  from  St.  Louis 
-  to    whose    streets   in 
winter   he    hauled   cord 
wood,  dressed,  his  biog 
raphers  like  to  tell  us, 
in  a  rather  ragged  old 
army    overcoat.      After 
six  distressing  years  of 
a    not    very    successful 
struggle  with  hard  condi 
tions,  Grant  left  "Hard- 
scrabble,"  and  the  log-hut  he  had  built  there  with  his  own 
hands,  to  enter  his  father's  store  in  Galena,  Illinois.     At 
thirty-nine  he  was  written  down  a  failure  in  most  men's 
minds.     Strong  drink  had  secured  a  sad  influence  upon  him, 
—  and  this  reputation  followed  him  into  his  most  glorious 
period.     During  the  critical  days  of  his  services  in  the  Civil 


Brady  Photograph. 
ULYSSES  S.  GRANT  IN  1865. 


ULYSSES  SIMPSON  GRANT  569 

War,  a  deputation  of  Northern  whisky-hating  gentlemen 
called  upon  President  Lincoln  to  protest  against  the  reten 
tion  in  high  command  of  a  drinker.  Lincoln  (who  had  been 
greatly  attracted  to  the  silent  general  who  did  things,  instead 
of  asking  always  for  more  means  to  do  them)  met  the  situa 
tion  with  a  piece  of  characteristic  humor  -  - '  Did  the  depu 
tation  know  what  brand  of  whisky  Grant  drank?  He 
would  like  to  send  some  to  his  other  generals/  For  the 
war  had  given  Grant  his  opportunity  ;  and,  despite  his  later 
failures,  the  verdict  of  his  countrymen,  North  and  South, 
is  that  voiced  in  Lowell's  lines  :  - 

"He  came  grim-silent,  saw,  and  did  the  deed 
That  was  to  do.     In  his  master's  grip, 
Our  swords  flashed  joyous  :   no  skill  of  words  could  breed 
Such  sure  conviction  as  that  close-clamped  lip. 

"  Yet  did  this  man,  war-tempered,  stern  as  steel 
When  steel  opposed,  prove  soft  in  civil  sway. 
The  hand,  hilt-hardened,  had  lost  tact  to  feel 
The  world's  base  coin ;   and  glossing  knaves  made  prey 
Of  him  and  of  the  entrusted  Commonweal. 

*  *  *  *  *  *  * 

"  We  turn  our  eyes  away,  and  so  will  Fame, 
As  if  in  his  last  battle  he  had  died 
Victor  for  us  and  spotless  of  all  blame, 
Doer  of  hopeless  tasks  which  praters  shirk, 
One  of  those  still,  plain  men  who  do  the  world's  rough  work." 

The  main  proof  of  corruption  in  Congress  was  connected 
with  the  Union  Pacific  Railroad.     For  ten  years  before  the 
Civil  War,  ever  since  the  discovery  of  gold  in  Cali-  The  Union 
fornia,  the  country  had  discussed  the  building  of  Pacific 
a  transcontinental  railway.     In  1862  Congress  gave  right 
of  way  through  the  Territories  from  Omaha  to  California 
to  a   corporation  known   as   the  Union  Pacific,  —  with  a 
grant  also  of  twenty  square  miles  of  land  along  each  mile 
of  road,  and  a  "loan"  of  $50,000,000.     In  1869  the  two 
lines,  building  from  the  east  and  from  the  west,  met  in  Utah. 


570 


THE  CLOSE  OF  RECONSTRUCTION 


The  nation  had  been  so  dazzled  by  the  romance  of  carry 
ing  an  iron  road  from  ocean  to  ocean  through  two  thousand 
Land  miles  of  "desert"  that  it  had  been  exceedingly 

grants  to  careless  of  its  own  interests.  The  fifty  million 
dollar  loan  was  inadequately  secured,  and  never 
repaid.  That  sum,  with  the  land  grants,  more  than  built 
the  road  —  which,  however,  was  left  altogether  in  private 
hands.  The  only  new  feature  about  this  was  the  huge  size 
of  the  grant.  As  early  as  1850,  Congress  gave  Illinois 
3,000,000  acres  from  the  Public  Domain  within  that  State 


RAILWAY  LAND  GRANTS 

1850  - 1871 


for  the  Illinois  Central  Railroad.  The  State  legislature 
then  transferred  the  grant,  as  was  intended,  to  the  com 
pany  building  the  road.  Immense  grants  of  like  character 
were  made  to  other  Western  States.  In  1856  twenty  million 
acres  were  given  away.  Mild  attempts  by  the  legislatures 
and  by  Congress  to  couple  the  gifts  with  conditions  to 
secure  the  public  interest  achieved  little  success.  After 
the  war,  still  more  immense  gifts  were  made,  by  Congress 
directly,  from  the  Domain  in  the  Territories.  In  the 
shaded  part  of  the  map  above,  every  alternate  section  was 


THE  CREDIT  MOBILIER  SCANDAL  571 

granted  for  the  construction  of  some  road.  (Texas  had  no 
National  land  within  it;  and  none  was  granted  in  Okla 
homa,  then  Indian  Territory.  The  huge  State  grants  are 
not  shown  on  this  map.) 

Worse  than  this  waste  of  the  people's  property  was  a 
steal  within  the  Company.  A  group  of  leading  stockholders 
of  the  Union  Pacific  formed  themselves  into  an  "inside" 
company  known  as  the  "  Credit  Mobilier."  Then,  as  stock 
holders  of  the  Union  Pacific,  they  looted  that  company  by 
voting  to  the  Credit  Mobilier  extravagant  sums  for  construct 
ing  the  road.  This  was  the  first  notorious  use  of  a  device 
that  the  coming  decades  were  to  make  disgracefully  familiar. 

And  worse  than  this  steal  by  private  individuals  was  the 
accompanying  corruption  in  Congress.     The  Credit  Mobilier 
feared  that  its  robbery  might  be  stopped  by  Con-  The  Credit 
gressional  action.     To  prevent  that,  it  gave  shares  Mobilier 
of  its  highly  profitable  stock,  or  sold  them  far  be-  scanc 
low  market  rates,  to  Congressmen.     Oakes  Ames,  the  agent 
of  the  Company,  wrote  his  associates  that  he  had  placed 
the  shares  "where  they  will  do  us  the  most  good."     The 
matter   leaked   out;    and  Congress   had  to   "investigate." 
It  censured  two  members,  against  whom  it  found  absolute 
proof  of  corruption,  and  excused  from  punishment  various 
others,  smirched  in  the  transaction,  on  the  peculiar  ground 
that  they  had  not  understood  that  Ames  meant  to  corrupt 
them.     Still    others,    including    the    Vice    President,    were 
left  under  grave  suspicion. 

The  people  of  the  North  were  growing  weary  of  military 
rule  in  thejsouth,  and  they  were  sickened  by  the  corruption 
in  high  places  in  the  National  government.     The  Election 
elections  of  '74  gave  the  Democrats  a  large  major-  of  1876 
ity  in  the  lower  House  of  Congress,  and  placed  them  in 
control  in  several  Northern  State  governments.     Then  the 
presidential  election  of  1876  closed  the  long  era  of  political 
reconstruction.       The    Democrats    nominated    Samuel    J. 
Tilden  of  New  York,  a  prominent  reformer,  and  adopted 
a   "reform"  platform.     The   Republicans   named  as  their 


572       THE  LEGACY  OF  RECONSTRUCTION 

candidate  Rutherford  B.  Hayes  1  of  Ohio,  and  appealed 
chiefly  to  war-time  prejudices  by  a  vigorous  "waving  of 
the  bloody  shirt." 

On  the  morning  after  election,  papers  of  both  parties 
announced  a  Democratic  victory.  That  party  had  safely 
The  carried  every  "doubtful"  Northern  State  (New 

disputed  York,  New  Jersey,  Connecticut,  and  Indiana), 
and,  on  the  face  of  the  returns,  they  had  majori 
ties  in  every  Southern  State.  They  claimed  204  electoral 
votes  to  165.  But  in  Louisiana,  Florida,  and  South  Caro 
lina,  carpetbagger  governments,  hedged  by  Federal  bayo 
nets,  would  have  the  canvassing  of  the  returns,  and  they 
were  promptly  urged  by  desperate  Republican  politicians 
in  the  North  to  secure  a  favorable  count.  The  carpet 
bagger  officials  proved  easily  equal  to  the  emergency.  On 
the  alleged  ground  of  fraud  and  of  intimidation  to  Negro 
voters,  they  threw  out  the  votes  of  enough  districts  to 
declare  the  Republican  electors  chosen.  In  Oregon  one  of 
the  Republican  electors  who  had  been  chosen  proved  to  be 
a  postmaster ;  but  the  Constitution  declares  Federal  offi 
cials  ineligible  to  such  position.  In  these  four  States  two 
sets  of  electors  secured  credentials  from  rival  State  govern 
ments  or  conflicting  officials,  and  double  sets  of  votes  were 
sent  to  Washington.  Twenty  votes  were  in  dispute.  Hayes 
could  not  be  elected  without  every  one  of  them.  Any  one  of 
them  would  elect  Tilden. 

Louisiana  was  perhaps  the  most  trying  case.  There  the 
Democratic  ticket  had  a  majority  of  more  than  6000,  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  the  canvassing  boards  freely  em 
ployed  "perjury,  forgery,  and  shameless  manipulation  of 
the  returns  before  publication"  (Dunning,  Reconstruction, 

1  James  G.  Elaine,  for  many  years  preceding  1874  the  Speaker  of  the  House, 
had  been  a  leading  candidate.  Shortly  before  the  convention  met,  however, 
he  was  accused  of  complicity  in  the  Credit  Mobilier  scandal.  The  evidence 
was  supposed  to  be  contained  in  letters  from  Blaine  to  a  certain  Mulligan.  On 
pretense  of  examining  these  letters,  Blaine  got  hold  of  them  and  never  permitted 
them  to  pass  again  from  his  hands.  He  read  parts  from  them  in  a  dramatic 
"justification"  of  himself  before  the  House;  but  the  "Mulligan  Letters"  made 
this  "magnetic"  statesman  thereafter  an  impossible  candidate  for  National  favor. 


AMERICA'S  RACE  PROBLEM  573 

316).  But  the  canvassing  board  "threw  out  returns  on 
vague  rumor  and  unsupported  assertion,"  and  "ignored 
technical  irregularities  in  returns  that  favored  Republicans, 
but  used  the  same  defects  as  a  ground  for  rejecting  returns 
that  favored  the  Democrats."  Such  methods  manufactured 
a  Republican  majority  of  3500. 

How  should  it  be  decided  which  sets  were  valid  ?  The  Con 
stitution  was  unhappily  vague.  Congress  could  not  easily 
agree  upon  a  law,  because  the  lower  House  was  The  „  eight 
Democratic  and  the  Senate  Republican.  Injudi-  to  seven" 
cious  leadership  might  easily  have  plunged  the  c 
Nation  again  into  civil  war,  which  this  time  would  not  have 
been  sectional.  Finally  (January,  1877),  Congress  created 
the  famous  Electoral  Commission  of  fifteen,  to  pass  upon 
the  disputes,  —  five  members  chosen  by  the  House,  five 
by  the  Senate,  and  five  justices  of  the  Supreme  Court,  of 
which  last  five  three  were  Republicans.  After  many  pain 
ful  weeks,  by  a  strict  party  vote,  the  Commission  decided 
every  disputed  point  in  favor  of  the  Republicans.  The 
end  was  reached  only  two  days  before  the  date  for  the 
inauguration  of  the  new  President. 

The  "eight  to  seven"  decisions  became  a  by- word  in 
politics,  and  they  are  generally  regarded  as  proof  that 
even  members  of  the  Supreme  Court  were  controlled  by 
partisan  bias.  But  this  discreditable  result  was  more  than 
offset  by  the  notable  spectacle  of  half  a  nation  submitting 
quietly,  even  in  time  of  intense  party  feeling,  to  a  decision 
that  had  the  form  of  law.  Rarely,  in  any  country,  has 
free  government  been  subjected  to  such  a  strain  —  or 
withstood  one  so  triumphantly. 

After  all,  the  South  reaped  the  fruits  of  victory.  Presi 
dent  Hayes  at  once  removed  the  Federal  garrisons.  Then 
the  State  governments  to  which  his  election  had  been  due 
immediately  vanished,  and  the  South  was  left  to  work  out 
its  salvation  for  itself  as  best  it  could. 

Slavery  and  the  blunders  of  Reconstruction  have  left 
America  burdened  with  a  frightful  race  problem.  Southern 


574       THE  LEGACY  OF  RECONSTRUCTION 

Whites  have  continued  to  agree  in  the  necessity  for  keeping 
the  Negro  from  the  polls,  —  at  least  wherever  his  vote 
The  South  might  be  a  real  factor,  —  and  that  race  remains 
and  the  practically  destitute  of  political  privilege.  To 
keep  it  so,  there  has  been  created  and  preserved 
for  a  third  of  a  century  "the  Solid  South,"  in  close  alliance 
with  the  Democratic  party,  without  the  possibility  of 
natural  and  wholesome  division  upon  other  issues. 

In  1890  the  Republicans  in  Congress  attempted  to  restore 
Federal  supervision  of  congressional  and  presidential  elec 
tions.  The  "Lodge  Force  Bill"  failed,  partly  from  the 
opposition  of  northern  capital  invested  now  in  Southern 
manufactures.  But  the  South  took  warning,  and  began  to 
protect  its  policy  by  the  forms  of  constitutional  right.  The 
States  adopted  property  qualifications  and  educational  tests 
for  the  franchise.  Mississippi  led  off  (1890)  by  prescribing 
payment  of  a  poll  tax  and  the  ability  to  read  or  understand 
the  Constitution.  Only  37,000  of  the  147,000  adult  Negro 
males  could  read;  few  of  these  paid  the  tax;  and  White 
officials  decide  whether  a  would-be  voter  understands  the  Con 
stitution.  Such  qualifications,  in  practice,  too,  are  invoked 
only  against  the  Negro,  not  against  the  illiterate  White. 
Sometimes  the  latter  is  protected  further  by  the  notorious 
"Grandfather  clause,"  expressly  declaring  that  the  restric 
tions  shall  not  exclude  any  one  who  could  vote  prior  to 
January  1,  1861,  or  who  is  the  son  or  grandson  of  such  voter. 
In  1916,  an  extreme  provision  of  this  sort  in  Oklahoma  was 
declared  unconstitutional  by  the  Federal  Courts. 

On  the  side  of  civil  equality,  as  we  have  noted,  the  Four 
teenth  Amendment  is  even  more  a  dead  letter.  Just  at  the 
close  of  Reconstruction  (in  1875),  Congress  made  a  final 
attempt  to  secure  for  Negroes  the  same  accommodations 
as  for  Whites  in  hotels,  railways,  and  theaters.  In  1883, 
however,  the  Supreme  Court  declared  the  law  uncon 
stitutional  when  in  conflict  with  State  authority  (page  564). 
Accordingly,  the  two  races  in  the  South  live  without  social 
mingling. 

The  special  cry  of  the  South  is  "race  integrity."     Inter- 


AMERICA'S  RACE  PROBLEM  575 

marriage,  it  is  insisted,  shall  not  be  permitted :  therefore 
there  must  be  no  social  intercourse  on  terms  of  equality. 
Many  leaders  of  the  Negro  race,  too,  like  the  late  Booker 
Washington  of  Tuskegee  and  his'  successor,  Charles  Moten, 
desire  social  segregation  for  the'  present,  —  but  with  a  dif 
ference.  To  the  White,  Negro  segregation  means  Negro  in 
feriority.  To  these  Negro  leaders,  separate  cars  and  separate 
schools  for  their  people  mean  a  better  chance  for  the  Negro 
to  "find  himself"  ;  but  they  insist  that  the  "Jim  Crow  car" 
shall  be  cared  for  and  equipped  as  well  as  the  car  for  Whites 
who  pay  the  same  rates,  and  that  Negro  schools  shall 
receive  their  proportion  of  State  funds  and  attention.  As 
yet,  this  goal  remains  far  distant.1 

1  Southern  States  authorize  cities  to  shut  out  Negro  homes  from  residential 
districts  which  they  choose  to  reserve  for  Whites.  The  Supreme  Court  has  de 
clared  these  laws  void  (November,  1917)  —  but  on  the  ground  that  the  (White) 
owner  must  not  be  deprived  by  the  State  of  his  right  to  sell  his  property  in  such  districts 
in  any  way  he  thinks  most  profitable.  It  does  not  appear  that  the  decision  seriously 
threatens  "Jim-Crowism." 


PAET  XI  — A  BUSINESS  AGE:  1876-1917 


THE  forty  years  between  Reconstruction  and  the  World 
War  belong  to  "contemporary  history."  Leading  actors 
are  still  living ;  and  causes  and  motives  in  many  cases  are 
not  yet  surely  known.  The  two  great  phases  are  an 
enormous  economic  and  industrial  growth,  and  the  rising 


THE  CAPITOL  AT  WASHINGTON. 

struggle  between  the  people  on  the  one  side,  and  great  wealth, 
fortified  by  special  privilege,  on  the  other. 

Wealth  is  supported  by  vast  numbers  of  a  middle  class 
who  feel  dependent  upon  it.  The  labor  unions,  small  as 
their  enrollment  is  in  comparison  with  the  total  number  of 
workers,  hold  the  first  trench  on  the  other  side,  because  of 
their  admirable  organization.  Both  sides,  on  the  whole,  are 
honest;  but  each  believes  the  other  dishonest  and  un- 

576 


TABLE  OF  ADMINISTRATIONS 


577 


patriotic.  Neither  can  get  the  other's  viewpoint ;  and 
each  has  been  guilty  of  blunders  and  of  sins.  Privilege 
believes  that  the  welfare  of  the  country  rests  on  business 
prosperity,  and  that  the  government  ought  to  be  an  adjunct 
of  business.  Labor  regards  this  attitude  as  due  merely 
to  personal  greed,  and,  on  its  side,  wishes  government  to 
concern  itself  directly  with  promoting  the  welfare  of  men 
and  women.  Privilege,  by  words,  proclaims  devotion  to 
"  American  "  individualism  (a  safe  principle  for  the  strong 
few  in  contests  with  a  more  numerous  but  divided  and  weak 
foe),  while,  by  its  secret  control  of  the  press  and  the  govern 
ment,  it  threatens  the  life  of  democracy.  Labor,  to  save 
that  American  principle  of  democracy,  turns  from  early  in 
dividualism  toward  collective  and  cooperative  action.  Each 
party,  quite  honestly,  denounces  the  other  as  unAmerican. 
The  student  of  history  may  hope  that  this  class  war  is  only  a 
necessary  stage  in  progress  toward  a  broader  social  unity. 

The  following  table  of  Administrations  may  be  convenient 
for  reference  in  considering  this  period. 


1877-1881 

1881-1885 


1885-1889 
1889-1893 

1893-1897 

1897-1901 
1901-1905 
1905-1909 
1909-1913 

1913-1917 
1917-1921 

1921- 


REPUBLICAN 

("House    Democratic,    whole 
jj  period 

*ayes  I  Senate  Democratic,    1879- 

1881 

Garfield  —  Arthur  (House  Demo 
cratic,  1883-1885,  almost  two  to 
one) 

Harrison  (House  Democratic, 
1891-1893,  by  231  to  88) 


DEMOCRATIC 


McKinley 

McKinley  —  Roosevelt 
Roosevelt 

Taft     (House     Democratic     after 
1910) 


Harding 


Cleveland  (Senate  Republican) 


Cleveland    (Senate    and    House 
Republican  after  1894) 


Wilson 

Wilson     (Congress    Republican 
after  1918) 


CHAPTER  XXXVII 

NATIONAL   GROWTH 

BETWEEN  1860  and  1880,  population  rose  from  31  millions 
to  50  millions  —  one  fourth  the  gain  coming  from  immigra- 
Growth  of  tion  —  and  wealth  multiplied  two  and  a  half 
population  times.  Since  1880,  wealth  has  grown  even  more 
rapidly,  but  population  more  slowly.  In  1890  the  United 
States  had  63|  millions  of  people,  and  in  1920,  106  mil 
lions  (not  counting  the  ten  millions  in  the  new  posses 
sions  acquired  from  Spain).  Recently,  the  Middle  West, 
so  long  the  scene  of  most  rapid  increase,  has  become  station 
ary  ;  while  the  manufacturing  East  and  the  far  West 
have  shared  between  them  the  greatest  growth.  In  1860 
cities  contained  one  sixth  the  population ;  in  1880,  one 
fourth ;  and  in  1920,  more  than  one  half.1  Less  than 
one  third  the  people  now  live  on  farms. 

The  rate  of  increase  then  is  very  much  smaller  than  in 
our  earlier  periods,  and  such  increase  as  we  have  has  come 
immigra-  very  largely  from  without  —  and  from  recent 
tion,  comers.  Immigration  was  checked  by  the  Civil 

War.  In  1883,  however,  it  brought  us  more  than 
700,000  people,  and  in  1905,  more  than  a  million.  Until 
1890,  immigration  remained  mainly  like  that  before  the 
Civil  War  —  with  some  increase  in  the  Scandinavian  settlers 
in  the  Northwest.  Since  that  year,  more  and  more,  the 
immigrants  have  come  from  Southern  and  Eastern  Europe,  — 
Italians,  Russian  Jews,  Bohemians,  Poles,  Hungarians.  A 
large  part  of  these  Southern  European  immigrants  are  illit 
erate  and  unskilled,  with  a  "standard  of  living"  lower 
than  that  of  American  workingmen.  In  1880  they  made 
only  one  twentieth  of  the  immigrants ;  in  1900  they  made 

1  Fifty-two  per  cent.     All  places  of  more  than  2500  people  rank  as  "urban." 

578 


NATIONAL  GROWTH 


579 


580 


A  BUSINESS  AGE,   1876-1914 


one  fourth ;  and  the  proportion  constantly  increased  up  to 
the  World  War.  From  1914  to  1919  immigration  brought 
us  only  some  200,000  a  year.  At  the  close  of  the  war, 
indeed,  the  tide  turned  for  a  while  the  other  way,  and,  for 
a  year  or  so,  more  European-born  residents  left  us  than 
came  to  us ;  but  by  the  middle  of  1920  every  indication 
pointed  to  a  new  rise  to  the  annual  million  mark.  Our 
earlier  immigrants  sought  homes  for  the  most  part  on 


Copyright,  Underwood  a.  Underwood. 

ELLIS  ISLAND  IN  NEW  YORK  HARBOR,  where  our  annual  million  are  detained  for 
examination.  The  war  vessel  in  the  foreground  is  the  German  Kaiser  Wil- 
helm  II,  which  was  visiting  in  American  waters  in  1913,  when  this  photograph 
was  taken. 

western  farms.     Those  of  recent  years  have  settled  mainly 
in  manufacturing  centers. 

When  the  Civil  War  began,  the  thirty-four  States  made 
a  solid  block  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Mississippi,  with  one 
The  Forty-  complete  tier  on  the  west  bank  of  that  river  and 
eight  with  Texas  and  California  farther  west.  Kansas 

was  added  in  1861 ;  Nevada,  in  '64 ;  Nebraska, 
in  '67;  and  Colorado  became  the  thirty-eighth  State  in 
1876.  No  new  State  came  in  for  the  next  thirteen  years 


NATIONAL  GROWTH  581 

—  although  the  increase  of  population  was  then  still  most 
rapid  in  the  agricultural  region  of  the  newest  "West."  In 
the  Dakotas,  districts  without  a  settler  in  March  were 
sometimes  organized  counties  in  November.  The  two 
Dakota  Territories  were  long  kept  knocking  for  admission, 
however,  because  the  Democratic  Congress  was  unwilling 
to  add  States  so  sure  to  reinforce  the  Republican  party. 


Copyright,  Underwood  &  Underwood. 

FUTURE  AMERICANS.  A  photograph  of  a  band  of  Armenians  landed  at  Ellis 
Island,  March  9,  1916,  —  the  advance  guard  of  a  body  of  4200  who  were  rescued 
at  one  time  from  Turkish  massacre  during  the  World  War,  by  a  French  cruiser 
off  the  coast  of  Syria. 

Montana  and  Washington,  on  the  other  hand,  were  expected 
to  strengthen  the  Democrats;  and  in  1889  an  "omnibus 
bill"  admitted  all  four  States.  The  next  year,  the  admis 
sion  of  Idaho  and  Wyoming  gave  the  first  continuous  band 
of  States  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific.  Utah,  though 
prosperous  and  populous,  was  kept  out  for  years  because  of 
its  polygamy ;  but  in  1890,  when  the  Mormon  Church  re 
nounced  that  doctrine,  the  State  was  admitted.  Oklahoma, 


582  A  BUSINESS  AGE,  1876-1914 

the  old  "Indian  Territory,"  came  in  in  1907,  and  Arizona 
and  New  Mexico  in  1912.  This  completed  the  solid  block 
of  forty-eight  States  in  the  vast  region  bounded  by  the  two 
oceans,  east  and  west,  and  by  Canada  and  Mexico  north  and 
south.  Before  long,  no  doubt,  the  nation  will  be  confronted 
with  demands  for  statehood  from  distant  possessions,  — 
Alaska,  Hawaii,  and  Porto  Rico. 

After  1880,  the  "New  South"  began  to  reap  its  share  of 
industrial  growth.  First  it  seized  upon  its  long-neglected 
The "  New  advantages  for  cotton  manufacture.  Northern 
South"  capital  built  mills  along  the  "Fall  Line"  (page 
134),  and  cheap  labor  was  found  by  inducing  the  "Poor 
Whites"  of  the  neighboring  mountain-folk  to  gather  in 
factory  villages,  where  oftentimes  indolent  parents  lived  on 
the  earnings  of  little  children.  The  awakened  South  began 
also  to  make  use  of  its  mines  and  forests,  —  especially  of  the 
rich  coal  and  iron  region  stretching  from  West  Virginia 
through  Tennessee  into  Northern  Alabama.  By  1880,  Ala 
bama  was  sending  pig  iron  to  Northern  mills,  and  soon  she 
became  herself  a  great  center  of  steel  manufacturing. 

Thus  the  old  agricultural  South  was  transformed  into  a 
new  South  of  varied  industries.  After  1902,  this  tendency 
was  hastened  by  the  falling  off  in  profits  of  cotton  farm 
ing  due  to  the  increasing  ravages  of  the  boll  weevil.  And 
even  agriculture  has  been  transformed.  Just  after  the  war, 
attempts  were  made  to  cultivate  huge  plantations  of  the 
old  type  with  gangs  of  hired  Negroes.  This  proved  a 
losing  venture;  and  soon  the  great  plantations  began  to 
break  up  into  smaller  holdings,  rented  on  shares  to  Negroes 
or  to  Poor  Whites.  These  renters  have  been  growing  rapidly 
into  owners.  The  Negro's  wholesome  ambition  to  own  a 
farm  promises  to  be  a  chief  source  of  industrial  and  social 
salvation  to  his  race  and  to  the  whole  South. 

Railway  extension  had  been  checked  during  the  four 
years  of  war,  but  the  last  five  years  of  the  sixties  almost 
Railway  doubled  the  mileage  of  the  country.  The  new 
growth  lines  were  located  mainly  in  the  Northwestern 
States  and  Territories ;  and  they  were  busied  at  first  only 


THE  RAILWAY  583 

in  carrying  settlers  to  the  moving  frontier,  and  then  soon 
in  bringing  back  farm  produce.  From  1873  to  1878,  con 
struction  was  checked  again  by  one  of  the  periodic  business 
panics.  Then  by  1880,  another  almost  fabulous  burst 
raised  the  mileage  to  92,000,  and  the  next  ten  years  nearly 
doubled  this,  —  to  164,000  miles.  Since  1890,  expansion 
has  been  less  rapid ;  but  the  next  twenty  years  (to  1910) 
raised  the  total  to  237,000  miles.  Since  1880  America  has 
had  a  larger  ratio  of  railway  mileage  to  population  than 


THE  BIGGEST  ELECTRIC  LOCOMOTIVE.  The  railroads  have  kept  pace  with  other 
industries  in  material  development.  The  electric  locomotive  here  pictured  is 
one  of  forty-two  that  haul  passengers  and  freight  over  the  great  Continental 
Divide,  in  Montana.  It  weighs  282  tons,  and  can  haul  3200  tons  (six  and  a 
half  million  pounds)  up  a  one  per  cent  grade  at  16  miles  an  hour ;  or,  geared 
for  higher  speed,  it  can  pull  a  passenger  train  of  800  tons  on  a  level  at  a  mile 
a  minute. 

any  other  country.  Railroads  represent  one  seventh  the 
total  wealth  of  the  Nation,  and  employ  more  than  a  million 
men. 

The  eighties  witnessed  also  a  transformation  in  the  old 
railroads.  Heavier  steel  rails,  thanks  to  the  Bessemer  in 
vention,  replaced  iron.  This  made  possible  the  use  of 
heavier  locomotives  and  of  steel  cars  of  greater  size ;  and 
these  called  in  turn  for  straightening  curves,  cutting  down 
grades,  and  bettering  roadbeds.  Such  changes  "fixed"  a 


584  A  BUSINESS  AGE,   1876-1914 

large  amount  of  capital,  but  they  greatly  reduced  the  cost 
of  transportation. 

More  significant  than  these  physical  changes  was  the  con 
solidation  of  railway  management  and  ownership.  In  1860 
Railway  no  one  company  reached  from  the  Atlantic  to 
consoiida-  Chicago  :  indeed,  no  company  controlled  five  hun 
dred  miles  of  road.  One  short  line  led  to  an 
other,  and  so  to  another,  perhaps  with  awkward  gaps,  and 


Courtesy  of  the  Carnegie  Steel  Company. 

FORGING  A  RAILWAY  CAR  AXLE,  at  the  Howard  Axle  Works,  Homestead,  Pa. 
The  drop-hammer,  about  to  strike  upon  the  white-hot  axle,  weighs  three  and  a 
half  tons,  and  is  one  of  fourteen  such  hammers  in  these  works. 

certainly  with  annoying  and  costly  transfers,  and  with  con 
fusing  changes  in  rates  and  in  schedules  and  sometimes  in 
width  of  track.  By  1880,  the  gaps  had  been  filled,  gauges 
unified,  and  small  lines  grouped  into  larger  systems  —  still 
counting,  however,  some  1500.  By  1895,  this  number  had 
been  cut  in  half  by  further  consolidation,  and  forty  leading 
lines  controlled  half  the  mileage  of  the  whole  country.  By 


AN  ERA  OF  CONSOLIDATION  585 

1905,  all  important  lines  were  controlled  by  seven  or  eight 
groups  of  capitalists. 

A   like    consolidation    of    capital    and    management    has 
been   marked   in  nearly  every  sort  of   industry  and  com 
merce.     Between   1880  and   1890  the  number  of  An  era  of 
woolen  mills   decreased  from  1990  to  1311,  and  consoiida- 
the  manufactories  of  farm  implements  from  1943  * 
to  910  ;    but  in  both  lines  the  output  was  more  than  doubled. 


THE  CARRIE  FURNACES  OF  THE  CARNEGIE  STEEL  COMPANY,  among  the  most  modern 
of  blast  furnaces.  This  view,  showing  part  of  the  ore  stock  yard,  is  taken  from 
the  "charging"  side. 

So,  too,  of  iron  and  steel  mills.  The  age  of  small  individual 
enterprise  had  given  way  to  an  age  of  large  combinations. 
Small  stores  merged  into  department  stores ;  small  firms 
into  large  corporations ;  large  corporations  into  still  larger 
"trusts."  In  the  East,  the  making  of  "ready-made"  cloth 
ing  became  a  mighty  factory  industry,  and  new  leather-sew 
ing  machinery  built  up  huge  shoe-factories.  In  the  West, 
the  farmer's  grain  was  no  longer  ground  in  a  neighboring 


586  A  BUSINESS  AGE,   1876-1914 

mill  on  some  small  stream,  but  in  great  flour  centers  like 
Minneapolis ;  and  his  beeves  and  hogs  went,  not  to  a  vil 
lage  slaughter-house,  but  to  the  vast  meat-packing  indus 
tries  of  Chicago.  Even  in  agriculture  this  era  of  combination 
saw  a  new  type v  of  "bonanza  farmers,"  each  owning  his 
thousands  of  rich  acres  in  the  Dakotas;  and  "cattle  kings" 
seized  on  the  immense  feeding  ranges  of  the  Southwest. 

In  connection  with  new  scientific  knowledge,  such  com 
bination  brought  vast  saving  of  wealth.  The  old  village 
slaughter  house  threw  away  horns  and  hoofs  and  hair  and 
intestines :  the  great  packing-house  works  up  all  these  — 
"everything  except  the  squeal"  -into  articles  of  use. 
Pine  stumps  were  found  valuable  for  turpentine ;  and  the 
Southern  cottonseed,  formerly  consigned  to  troublesome 
refuse  heaps,  was  found  highly  valuable,  first  for  fertilizing 
land,  then  for  stock  food,  and  finally  for  vegetable  oils 
for  human  food.  So,  too,  in  countless  other  lines. 

On  the  other  hand,  every  change  from  small  to  large 
organization  carried  with  it  the  cruel  ruin  of  countless  small 
"capitalists"  (who  had  owned  their  own  "stores"  or  shops) 
and  usually  also  a  grievous  upsetting  of  the  life-plans  of 
whole  classes  of  laborers  —  all  involving  physical  and  mental 
distress,  suicide,  and  crime.  Masses  of  ruined  families 
have  paid  for  every  gain  to  the  world  —  because  society, 
which  profits  so  splendidly  from  the  changes,  has  never 
tried  in  earnest  to  learn  how  to  insure  its  honest  workers 
against  such  unfair  loss. 

Unhappily,  this  material  growth  was  accompanied,  too, 
by  an  amazing  growth  of  business  immorality.  This 
Business  tendency,  noticeable  before  the  war,  had  been 
immorality  strengthened  by  the  flaunting  success  of  corrupt 
army  contractors,  and  was  fostered  for  years  afterward 
by  the  gambling  spirit  begotten  of  an  unstable  currency 
and  of  the  spectacle  of  multitudes  of  fortunes  made  over 
night  in  the  oil  wells  of  Pennsylvania  or  in  the  new 
mining  regions  of  Nevada,  Colorado,  Idaho,  and  Montana. 
In  later  years,  too,  the  tremendous  power  over  credits 
possessed  by  railroad  kings  and  by  the  heads  of  other 


BUSINESS  IMMORALITY  587 

great  consolidations  of  capital  has  tempted  them  con 
stantly  from  their  true  functions  as  "captains  of  industry" 
to  play  the  part  of  buccaneers  in  the  stock  market ;  and  un 
reasonable  profits  in  the  regular  line  of  business  draw  the 
controlling  stockholders  in  multitudes  of  corporations  to 
increase  their  own  shares  by  juggling  the  smaller  holders 
out  of  theirs. 

Sometimes  the  controlling  stockholders  of  a  corporation 
turn  its  affairs  over  to  an  operating  company  —  composed 


Courtesy  of  the  Carnegie  Steel  Company 
SHEARING  OFF  STEEL  SLABS. 

of  themselves  alone  —  which  then  absorbs  all  the  profits 
of  the  whole  business  in  salaries  or  in  other  ways  provided 
in  the  contract  which  the  raiders  have  made  with  themselves. 
Or  leading  members  of  a  railway  company  organize  an 
inside  company  —  like  an  express  company  —  to  which 
then  the  legitimate  profits  of  the  first  company  are  largely 
diverted  in  the  shape  of  excessive  rates  on  certain  parts  of 


588  A  BUSINESS  AGE,   1876-1914 

the  railroad  business.  Only  one  degree  worse  is  the  de 
liberate  wrecking  of  a  prosperous  corporation,  by  intentional 
mismanagement,  so  that  the  insiders  may  buy  up  the  stock 
for  a  song,  and  then  rejuvenate  it  —  to  their  huge  profit. 
Step  by  step,  the  law  has  striven  to  cope  with  all  such 
forms  of  robbery ;  but  numerous  shrewd  corporation 
lawyers  find  employment  in  steering  "malefactors  of  great 
wealth"  1  through  the  devious  channels  of  "high  finance" 
so  as  to  avoid  grazing  the  letter  of  the  law. 

One  ruinous  consequence  of  this  lack  of  moral  sense  in 
business  was  a  general  indifference  to  the  looting  of  the 
Looting  public  domain  by  business  interests  and  favored 
the  public  individuals.  Thus,  the  forests  on  the  public 
lands,  with  decent  care,  would  have  supplied  all 
immediate  wants  and  still  have  remained  unimpaired  for 
future  generations.  But  with  criminal  recklessness,  the 
people  permitted  a  few  individuals  not  only  to  despoil  the 
future  of  its  due  heritage,  but  even  to  engross  to  them 
selves  the  vast  immediate  profits  which  properly  belonged 
to  present  society  as  a  whole.  And,  in  their  haste  to  grasp 
these  huge  profits,  the  big  lumbermen  wasted  more  than 
they  pocketed,  —  taking  only  the  best  log  perhaps  out  of 
three,  and  leaving  the  others  to  rot,  or,  along  with  the 
carelessly  scattered  slashings,  to  feed  chance  fires  into  irre 
sistible  conflagrations,  which,  it  is  estimated,  have  swept 
away  at  least  a  fourth  of  our  forest  wealth.  Quaintly 
enough,  this  piteous  spoliation  and  waste  was  excused  and 
commended  as  "development  of  natural  resources,"  and 
laws  were  made  or  twisted  for  its  encouragement. 

Timber  land,  especially  the  pine  forests  of  the  Northwest, 
did  not  attract  the  genuine  homesteader :  too  much  labor 
was  required  to  convert  such  lands  into  homes  and  farms, 
and  the  soil  and  distance  from  market  were  discouraging 
for  agriculture.  Such  lands  ought  to  have  been  withdrawn 
by  the  government  from  homestead  entry.  But,  as  the 
law  was  then  administered,  a  man  could  "enter"  a  quarter 

1  A  phrase  of  President  Roosevelt's. 


AN  EPIDEMIC  OF  PLUNDER  589 

section,  clear  a  patch  upon  it,  appear  upon  it  for  a  night 
every  few  months,  and  so  fulfill  all  legal  requirements  to 
complete  title,  —  after  which  he  had  perfect  right  to  sell 
the  valuable  timber,  which  had  been  his  only  motive  in  the 
transaction.  Multitudes,  less  scrupulous  about  legal  for 
malities,  sold  the  timber  immediately  after  making  entry, 
without  ever  "proving  up"  at  all. 

These  individual  operations  were  trivial  in  amount;  but 
the  big  lumber  kings  extended  their  effect  by  hiring  hundreds 
and  thousands  of  "dummy"  homesteaders  to  secure  title 
in  this  way  to  vast  tracts  of  forest  and  to  turn  it  over,  for 
a  song,  to  the  enterprising  employer.  Nor,  in  early  years, 
did  any  one  see  wrong  in  this  process.  Condemnation, 
none  too  severe,  was  reserved  for  the  lumbermen  who  took 
shorter  cuts  by  forging  the  entries  or  by  using  the  same 
"dummies"  many  times  over,  in  open  defiance  of  the  law. 
In  ways  similar,  but  varied  as  to  details,  the  State  lands,  too, 
became  the  legalized  booty  of  private  citizens. 

This  epidemic  of  waste  and  plunder  had  its  golden  age 
from  1870  to  about  1890.  Winston  Churchill's  In  a  Far 
Country  and  William  Allen  White's  A  Certain  Rich  Man 
are  each  a  sort  of  "Pilgrim's  Progress"  allegory  of  American 
life  in  these  decades,  picturing  its  features,  both  good  and 
bad,  as  no  mere  narrative  can.  Some  thinkers,  lacking  in 
robust  faith,  despaired  openly  of  democracy ;  and  the  cou 
rageous  James  Russell  Lowell  wrote  sorrowfully  of  the 
degradation  of  the  moral  tone  in  America,  — 

"  I  loved  her  old  renown,  her  stainless  fame. 
What  better  cause  that  I  should  loathe  her  shame !  " 

On  the  other  hand,  vigorous  signs  of  new  promise  were 
not  wanting.  A  passion  for  education  possessed  the  people. 
The  public  high  school  was  just  taking  full  possession  of  its 
field.  A  new  group  of  great  teachers  and  organizers  at 
new  universities,  —  Andrew  D.  White  at  Cornell,  James 
B.  Angell  at  Michigan,  Gilman  at  Johns  Hopkins,  Eliot 
at  his  reorganized  Harvard,  with  their  many  fellows,  - 
were  setting  up  higher  ideals  for  American  scholarship,  and 


590  A  BUSINESS  AGE,   1876-1914 

connecting  scholarship  as  never  before  with  the  daily  life  of 
the  people.  About  1890,  such  institutions  began  to  send 
forth  trained,  devoted,  vigorous  young  men  to  the  service 
of  the  nation  in  its  battle  with  corruption  and  with  in 
trenched  privilege.  Meantime,  during  the  darkest  years  of 
material  prosperity,  some  of  the  fine  idealism  of  the  Civil 
War  period  lived  on  — -  sometimes  no  doubt  in  blundering 
paths  —  in  the  movements  of  the  Greenbackers  and  Prohi 
bitionists  and  Grangers  (below)  to  regenerate  society. 


CHAPTER  XXXVIII 

THE  POLITICAL   STORY,    1876-1896 

CIVIL  SERVICE   AND   THE   TARIFF 

UNTIL  the  Roosevelt  administration,  the  average  re 
spectable  citizen  knew  little  definitely  about  the  corruption 
rampant  in  business  and  politics,  and  was  usually 

.      i.       j  .       j.        •  11  .•     '  11  Agitation 

inclined  to  dismiss  all  accusations  as  groundless.  for  civil 
One  evil,  however,  was  too  spectacular  to  be  ig- 
nored.  In  1871  public  opinion  forced  the  un 
willing  Congress  to  pass  an  Act  to  rescue  the  Civil  Service 
from  the  Spoils  system.  At  first,  President  Grant  seemed 
to  favor  the  idea ;  but  in  practice  he  let  his  friends  among 
the  spoilsmen  thwart  the  law  and  drive  from  office  the 
men  who  wished  to  administer  it  honestly  (page  267). 
And  in  1874  Congress  refused  to  renew  the  small  appro 
priation  for  the  work,  —  trusting  to  public  disgust  at  the 
breakdown  of  the  reform. 

President  Hayes  was  in  earnest  in  the  matter.  His  few 
removals  from  office  were  mainly  to  get  rid  of  spoilsmen  - 
as  when  he  dismissed  Chester  A.  Arthur  from  the  New  York 
Collectorship  of  Customs  —  and  he  issued  a  notable  "  Civil 
Service  order,"  quite  in  accord  with  the  ideas  of  Jefferson 
and  Gallatin,  forbidding  Federal  employees  to  take  part  in 
political  campaigns.  This  order,  however,  quickly  became 
a  dead  letter.  Post-office  officials  jeered  at  it ;  and  the 
nation  had  not  yet  learned  that  no  reform  was  possible 
except  on  this  basis. 

In  1880  the  campaign  was  a  struggle  for  office  between 
the  ins  and  outs  to  a  degree  unparalleled  since  1824.    Neither 
party  took  a  stand  on  any  live  question.     The  The  election 
Democrats  railed  at  various  Republican  shames,  of  188° 
but  gave  no  assurance  of  doing  better  themselves.     With  a 

591 


592  "POLITICS"   FROM   1876  TO   1898 

large  part  of  the  youth  of  the  nation  they  were  still  dis 
credited  as  "the  party  of  disloyalty."  The  Republicans 
"pointed  with  pride"  to  their  record  as  "the  Grand  Old 
Party  that  had  saved  the  Union  and  freed  the  Slave,"  but 
they  had  no  program  for  the  future.  Twenty  years  be 
fore,  the  Republican  party  had  been  the  party  of  the 
plain  people,  typified  by  Lincoln ;  but  during  its  long 
lease  of  power  the  desire  for  political  favors  had  drawn 
to  it  all  those  selfish  and  corrupt  influences  which  at  first 
had  opposed  it.  In  the  West  two  minor  parties  had  ap 
peared  with  real  convictions,  —  Prohibitionists  and  Green- 
backers,  —  but  their  numbers  were  insignificant. 

In  the  Republican  Convention  a  desperate  attempt  was 
made  to  nominate  ex-President  Grant,  but  the  tradition 
against  a  third  term  was  too  strong.  Ballot  after  ballot 
he  received  from  302  to  312  votes ;  but  379  were  necessary, 
and  the  nomination  finally  went  to  a  dark  horse,  —  James  A . 
Garfield.  For  the  Vice  Presidency  the  Convention  named 
Chester  A.  Arthur,  to  rebuke  Hayes'  reform  tendencies. 
The  Massachusetts  delegation  presented  a  resolution  favor 
ing  Civil  Service  Reform,  but  it  was  voted  down  over 
whelmingly  —  a  certain  Flanagan,  delegate  from  Texas, 
exclaiming  indignantly,  "What  are  we  here  for?" 

During  the  campaign  every  Federal  officeholder  received 
a  letter  from  the  Republican  National  Committee  assessing 
a  certain  per  cent  of  his  salary  for  the  Republican  campaign 
fund.  Officials  who  neglected  to  pay  these  "voluntary  con 
tributions"  were  "reported"  to  the  heads  of  their  depart 
ments  for  discipline.  The  vast  public  service,  of  two  hun 
dred  thousand  men,  was  turned  into  a'  machine  to  insure 
victory  to  the  party  in  control.  The  practice  had  never 
before  been  followed  up  with  such  systematic  shamelessness.1 

Garfield  was  elected  by  a  large  electoral  majority,  but  with 

1  Such  collections  from  officials  were  made  an  excuse  by  them  for  demanding 
higher  salaries.  As  always,  the  people  paid.  The  following  contrast  shows 
progress  in  outer  decency,  at  least :  in  a  recent  campaign  (1916)  the  Republican 
National  Committee  asked  thousands  of  voters  for  subscriptions ;  but  the  circular 
closed  with  the  injunction,  —  "If  you  are  a  Federal  officeholder,  please  disregard 
this  request." 


THE  STAR-ROUTE  SCANDAL  593 

only  some  10,000  votes  more  than  his  opponent  in  the 
country  at  large.  The  new  President  found  a  third  of  his 
time  consumed  by  office-seekers.  They  "waylaid  him  when 
he  ventured  from  the  shelter  of  his  home,  and  followed 
him  even  to  the  doors  of  the  church  where  he  worshipped." 
Four  months  after  his  inauguration  he  was  murdered  by  a 
crazed  applicant  for  office. 

Meantime,  more  scandal !  T.  W.  Brady,  one  of  the 
highest  officials  in  the  postal  service,  had  conspired  with  a 
group  of  contractors  —  including  a  United  States  The 
Senator  —  to  cheat  the  government  out  of  half  star-route 
a  million  dollars  a  year.  On  certain  "star  routes"  scandal 
the  legal  compensation  for  carrying  mail  had  been  increased 
enormously  by  secret  agreements  for  pretended  services,  and 
then  the  surplus  had  been  divided  between  the  contractors 
and  the  officials.  When  investigation  began,  Brady  de 
manded  that  Garfield  call  it  off.  Not  gaining  this  favor, 
he  published  a  letter  written  by  Garfield  during  the  cam 
paign,  showing  that  he  (Garfield)  had  urged  the  collection 
of  campaign  funds  from  officials.  On  the  other  hand,  Presi 
dent  Arthur  surprised  the  reform  element  by  his  good 
sense  and  firmness,  by  the  cordial  support  he  gave  to  Civil 
Service  Reform,  and  by  the  faithfulness  with  which  he 
pressed  the  trial  of  the  star-route  thieves. 

Those  trials  were  spectacular.  Important  newspapers 
impudently  whitewashed  the  criminals ;  and  insolent  boasts 
were  made  freely  that  no  jury  would  convict  such  "high 
and  influential  men."  Through  technicalities  and  delays, 
the  bigger  criminals  did  all  escape. 

These  events  focused  attention  again  on  the  need  of  civil 
service  reform.     Congress,  however,  remained   deaf  in  the 
session  of   1881-1882;   and,  in  the  congressional  victory  for 
elections  of    1882,  another    assessment    letter  to  Civil  Service 
Federal  officials  was  signed  by  three  leading  Re-  r 
publican  statesmen.     Popular  indignation  at  these  offenses 
made  itself  felt  in  the  elections,  and  the  next  session  of  the 
chastened  Congress  promptly  passed  the  Civil  Service  Act 
(January,  1883),  providing  that  vacancies  in  certain  classes 


594  "POLITICS"  FROM   1876  TO  1898 

of  offices  should  be  filled  in  future  from  applicants  whose 
fitness  had  been  tested  by  competitive  examination,  and 
that  such  appointments  should  be  revoked  afterward  only 
"for  cause."  A  Civil  Service  Commission,  also,  to  oversee 
the  workings  of  the  law,  was  established.  The  law  did 
not  apply  to  heads  of  large  offices,  or  to  any  office  where  the 
President's  nomination  requires  confirmation  by  the  Senate ; 
and  it  was  left  to  the  President  to  classify  from  time  to 
time  the  offices  to  be  protected.  President  Arthur  at  once 
placed  some  14,000  positions  under  the  operation  of  the  law. 

For  nearly  twenty  years,  Mr.  Elaine  had  been  the  idol 
of  the  Republican  masses,  and  in  1884  he  at  last  won  the 
Elaine  and  nomination  for  the  Presidency  —  despite  earnest 
Cleveland  opposition  from  a  large  "reform"  element  led  by 
veterans  like  Carl  Schurz,  Andrew  D.  White,  and 
George  William  Curtis,  editor  of  Harper's  Weekly,  and  by 
ardent  young  men  like  Henry  Cabot  Lodge  of  Massachu 
setts  and  Theodore  Roosevelt  of  New  York.  The  reformers 
took  their  defeat  in  various  ways.  Lodge  swallowed  his 
chagrin  and  supported  the  ticket.  Roosevelt  went  west, 
to  begin  his  ranch  life  in  Dakota.  The  greater  number  be 
came  "Mugwumps,"  and  supported  Grover  Cleveland,  the 
Democratic  candidate. 

Cleveland  had  attracted  attention  as  governor  of  New 

York  by   his   stubborn   honesty   and   his   fearless   attitude 

Cleveland      toward    the    corrupt     Tammany    machine.     His 

and  the         friends  jubilantly  shouted  the  slogan,  —  "  We  love 

ervice  ^^  ^or  j.^  enemjes  ^e  nas  made";  and  he  was 

elected  as  a  reform  President,  with  the  civil  service  issue 
in  the  foreground.  But  the  great  body  of  Democratic  poli 
ticians  were  secretly  or  actively  hostile  to  civil  service  re 
form  ;  and  the  President's  position  was  more  difficult  even 
than  Jefferson's  had  been  three  generations  before.  ID 
spite  of  the  recent  law,  every  Federal  official  was  still  a 
Republican.  The  democratic  office  seekers  were  ravening 
from  their  quarter-century  fast;  and  their  pressure  upon 
the  head  of  their  party  for  at  least  a  share  in  the  public 


THE  TARIFF  595 

service  was  overwhelming.  With  all  his  unquestioned 
sincerity  and  firmness,  the  President  gave  ground  before 
this  spoils  spirit  far  enough  to  drive  many  Mugwumps,  in 
disgust,  back  to  the  Republicans.  Still,  the  administration 
marks  a  notable  advance  for  a  non-partisan  service.  It 
definitely  established  the  principle  of  Hayes'  Civil  Service 
order  against  "offensive  partisanship"  by  officials,  prevented 
political  assessments,  and  doubled  the  "classified"  list. 

When  Cleveland  became  President,  the  war  tariffs  were 
still  in  force.     By  the  trend  of  history,  too,  high  protection 
had  become  associated  in  the  thought  of  the  North  Cleveiand 
with  the  preservation  of  the  Union  and  the  free-  and  the 
ing  of  the  slave ;  and  the  special  interests,  thriv-  * 
ing  on  protection,  knew  how  to  take  shrewd  advantage  of 
this  habit  of  thought  among  the  people. 

With  dogged  persistence,  Cleveland  strove  to  lead  the 
Democratic  party  to  take  up  tariff  reduction.  In  message 
after  message,  he  called  attention  to  the  dangerous  piling 
up  of  the  surplus  from  the  needless  revenue ;  to  the  con 
sequent  opportunities  for  extravagance  and  corruption  in 
expenditure ;  and  especially  to  the  unjust  burdens  upon  the 
poorer  classes  of  society  from  tariff  taxation.  In  December, 
1887,  his  message  was  given  up  wholly  to  this  one  topic, 
denouncing  the  existing  tariff  fiercely  as  "vicious"  and  "in 
equitable."  During  the  following  summer,  by  such  argu 
ment,  and  by  a  despotic  use  of  the  President's  power  of 
"patronage,"  the  House  was  spurred  into  passing  a  reform 
"Mills  bill,"  l  placing  a  few  important  articles  on  the  free 
list  and  reducing  the  average  tax  from  47  per  cent  to  40 ; 
but  this  measure  failed  in  the  Republican  Senate. 

In  the  "educational  campaign"  of  1888,  for  the  first  time 
for  almost  sixty  years,  the  tariff  was  the  leading  issue  before 
the  people.     Elaine    had    replied   to   Cleveland's  And  the 
epoch-making  message  of  '87  by  a  striking  "inter-  election 
view,"  cabled  from  Paris,  setting  up  protection  ( 
as  the  desirable  permanent  policy.     The  Republican  party 

1  Roger  Q.  Mills  of  Texas  was  the  chief  author  of  the  measure. 


596  "POLITICS"  FROM  1876  TO  1898 

rallied  to  this  standard.  Its  platform  declared  for  reduc 
tion  of  internal  taxes  (on  whisky),  in  order  to  remove  op 
portunity  to  reduce  tariff  income.  Orators  like  William 
McKinley  represented  tariff  reduction  as  "unpatriotic"  and 
"inspired  by  our  foreign  rivals,"  and  defended  the  cheapen 
ing  of  alcoholic  drinks  by  urging  that  "taxation  is  not 
designed  as  a  means  of  grace."  Even  the  Republicans  of 
the  Northwest,  where  Republican  conventions  in  State 
after  State  had  been  calling  for  reform,  were  whipped  into 
line  by  the  plea  that  the  tariff,  if  revised  at  all,  should  at 
least  be  revised  "by  its  friends." 

The  debate  was  marked  by  a  notable  shift  of  ground  on 
the  part  of  protectionists.  Clay  and  the  earlier  protec 
tionists  advocated  protection  for  "infant  industries,"  as  a 
temporary  policy.  This  argument  hardly  applied  now  that 
those  industries  had  become  dominating  influences  in  the 
country.  Greeley,  in  the  forties  and  fifties,  had  modified 
it  into  a  plea  for  protection  to  higher  wages  for  American 
workingmen  compared  with  European  laborers  (page  476). 
This  now  became  the  general  argument.  It  failed,  however, 
to  take  account  of  the  higher  cost  of  living  because  of  the 
tariff;  nor  was  evidence  submitted  to  show  that  the  pro 
tected  industries  really  paid  higher  wages  in  return  for  their 
tariff  privileges. 

The  Republican  manager,  Matthew  Quay,  Senator  from 
Pennsylvania,  was  a  noted  spoilsman,  and  had  been  publicly 
accused  in  Congress,  without  denial  on  his  part,  of  having 
stolen  $260,000  from  the  treasury  of  Pennsylvania  while  an 
officer  of  that  State.  He  now  called  on  "protected"  manu 
facturers  for  huge  contributions  to  the  Republican  funds,1 
and,  according  to  general  belief,  spent  money  more  freely 
than  ever  before  in  buying  votes  in  doubtful  States.  One 
scandal,  made  public  a  little  later,  was  long  remembered. 
A  member  of  the  Republican  National  Committee  wrote  to 
political  lieutenants  in  Indiana,  on  which  State  it  was 
thought  the  election  would  turn,  —  "Divide  the  'floaters' 

1  This  and  other  evil  features  of  the  political  campaigns  of  this  era  are  pre 
sented  in  Blythe's  striking  political  novel,  A  Western  Warwick. 


THE  TARIFF  597 

into  blocks  of  five,  and  put  a  trusted  man  with  the  necessary 
funds  in  charge  of  each  five,  and  make  him  responsible  that 
none  get  away  and  that  all  vote  our  ticket." 

With  the  secret  aid  of  the  Democratic  Tammany  machine 
in  New  York,  the  Republicans  elected  Benjamin  Harrison, 
though  he  had  100,000  fewer  votes  than  Cleveland.  An  orgy 
The  Republican  platform  had  promised  an  exten-  of  sP°ils 
sion  of  civil  service  reform  ;  but  for  months  after  the  victory, 
the  spoils  system  was  rampant.  Clarkson,  the  Assistant 
Postmaster-General,  earned  the  title  of  "the  Headsman," 
by  gleefully  decapitating  30,000  postmasters  in  the  first  year ; 
and,  amid  the  applause  of  the  Senate,  Ingalls  of  Kansas  de 
clared,  — "  The  purification  of  politics  is  an  iridescent 
dream ;  the  Decalogue  and  the  Golden  Rule  have  no  place  in 
a  political  campaign."  This  attitude  of  prominent  spoilsmen 
was  rebuked,  however,  by  the  people  in  the  Congressional 
elections  of  1890,  and  President  Harrison  appointed  to  the 
Civil  Service  Commission  Theodore  Roosevelt  of  New 
York.  This  fearless  young  reformer  at  once  injected  new 
energy  into  the  administration  of  the  law,  and  rallied  a 
fresh  enthusiasm  among  the  people  to  its  support  by  his 
vigorous  use  of  language.  Hitherto,  the  spoilsmen  had 
reviled  the  mild-mannered  gentlemen  of  the  Commission 
at  will :  Roosevelt  gave  back  epithet  for  epithet,  with 
interest,  —  as  when  he  affirmed  that  a  great  part  of  the 
political  contributions  extorted  from  reluctant  officials  was 
"retained  by  the  jackals  who  collected  it." 

The   Republicans   called   their   victory   "a   mandate   for 
protection,"  and  the  McKinley  Tariff  of  1890  raised  rates 
even  above  the  war  standard.     The  committee  in 
charge  of  the   framing  of    the  bill  held  "public  McKinley 
hearings,"  at  which   any    one    interested    might  Tariff 
appear,  to  present  his  needs  and  views.     In  prac 
tice,  this  resulted  in  hearing  at  great  length  the  claims  of 
the  scores  of  great  manufacturers,  but   hardly  at  all  the 
claims   of    the    millions    of    small   consumers.      Thus    the 
Binding  Twine  trust  secured  the  power  to  tax  every  sheaf 
of  the  farmer's  grain,  by  a  tariff  on  twine,  in  spite  of  earnest 


598  "POLITICS"  FROM   1876  TO  1898 

but  less  organized  opposition  by  the  farmers  of  the  country. 
"Special  interests"  shaped  the  law,  as  Randolph  had 
warned  the  nation  a  century  before. 

A  novel  feature  of  the  bill  was  its  "reciprocity"  provisions. 
Foreign  countries,  incensed  at  our  exclusion  of  their  products, 
were  threatening  retaliatory  tariffs  on  American  food 
stuffs  ;  and  even  Elaine  had  criticized  the  bill  sharply,  in  its 
original  form,  on  the  ground  that  it  failed  to  "open  the 
market  to  another  bushel  of  grain  or  another  barrel  of  pork." 
Finally,  it  was  arranged  that  the  President  might  provide 
by  treaty  for  the  free  admission  of  raw  sugar,  coffee,  molasses, 
and  hides,  from  any  country  which  would  admit  free  our 
products.  Some  treaties  of  this  nature  were  afterward 
negotiated  with  Central  and  South  American  countries. 

An  immediate  rise  in  prices  on  manufactures  l  made  the 
new  tariff  highly  unpopular,  and  the  congressional  elections 
of  1890  witnessed  a  "landslide"  for  the  Democrats.  Various 
House  bills  for  tariff  reduction,  however,  were  buried  in  the 
hold-over  Senate ;  and  the  surplus  in  the  Treasury  had  now 
been  dissipated  by  a  huge  increase  in  pensions  for  the 
veterans  of  the  Civil  War. 

Cleveland's  first  administration  had  witnessed  a  savage 
raid  on  the  Treasury  in  the  form  of  thousands  of  special 
Pensions  pension  bills.  Many  of  these  applied  to  merito- 
and  the  rious  cases  which  even  the  generous  provisions  of 
the  general  law  did  not  reach ;  but  hundreds  of 
others  were  gross  frauds,  which,  in  many  cases,,  had  already 
been  exposed  by  the  regular  pension  bureau.  Cleveland 
vetoed  233  private  pension  bills.2  Then  Harrison's  admin 
istration  saw  the  pension  rolls  doubled  by  a  new  general  law, 

1  The  rise  reached  many  forms  of  foodstuffs.     Thus  canned  goods  were  raised 
because  the  canners  had  to  pay  more  for  highly  protected  tin  plate. 

2  In  other  respects,   also,   Cleveland  gave  a  new  vigor  to  the   veto   power. 
President  Johnson,  in  his  Reconstruction  quarrel  with  Congress,  vetoed  21  bills, 
—  many  more  than  any  predecessor,  —  though  several  of  these  vetoes  were  over 
ridden.     Grant  used  the  veto  43  times  in  his  two  terms.     Up  to  Cleveland's 
accession,  there  had  been  in  all  only  132  Presidential  vetoes.     In  his  first  term 
Cleveland  used  the  power  301  times.     Cf.  page  458. 


A  BROKEN  BARGAIN  599 

with  an  increase  of  annual  expenditure  for  this  purpose  from 
88  millions  to  159  millions.  The  same  four  years  (1889- 
1893)  saw  the  yearly  expenditure  for  the  navy  mount  from 
17  to  33  millions.  The  Fifty-first  Congress  was  the  first 
"Billion-Dollar  Congress" — but  little  of  the  increase  in 
appropriations  went  to  anything  but  war  past  or  future. 

The  rebound  against  the  McKinley  Tariff  elected  Cleve 
land  again  in  1892.  The  Democratic  platform  had  declared 
frankly  for  a  tariff  "for  revenue  only."  During  Election 
the  campaign,  however,  the  leaders  felt  impelled  of  1892 
to  promise  that  reductions  from  existing  rates  should  be  made 
gradually,  so  as  to  permit  business  to  readjust  itself  safely. 
Moreover,  tariff  reform  was  now  hampered  by  currency  ques 
tions,  which  had  thrust  themselves  into  the  foreground 
(page  604  ff.).  A  "Wilson  Bill"  did  pass  the  House  in  form 
fairly  satisfactory  to  tariff  reformers ;  but  in  the 
Senate,  where  the  Democrats  had  a  bare  majority  "  wiison 
anyway,  several  members  deserted  in  order 
to  secure  protection  for  interests  which  they 
represented  (sugar  in  Louisiana,  iron  in  West  Virginia  and 
Alabama,  and  so  on),  and  amended  the  bill  into  what 
President  Cleveland  called  bluntly  a  measure  of  "party 
perfidy."  A  Congressional  investigation  revealed  also  the 
disgraceful  fact  that  prominent  senators  had  been  buying 
stocks  whose  value  would  be  raised  by  their  votes  for  pro 
tection.  Still  Cleveland  felt  constrained  to  let  the  bill 
become  law  —  as  the  best  thing  attainable.  It  reduced 
the  average  of  the  duties  from  49  to  40  per  cent ;  and  it  was 
accompanied  by  a  sop  to  the  radicals  in  the  shape  of  a 
tax  of  two  per  cent  on  all  incomes  over  $4000. 

But  this  compensation  to  the  poorer  classes  was  at  once 
nullified.     The   Supreme    Court    declared   the    income    tax 
unconstitutional,   on   the    ground    that  it  was  a 
direct  tax  but  not  apportioned  as  the  Constitu-  supreme 
tion    orders    for    direct    taxes    (Art.    I.    sec.    2).   Court 
During  the  War,  precisely  such  a  tax  had  been  ™cometax 
in  force,   and    in    1875    the   Court    had    decided 
unanimously  that  it  was  constitutional.     In  this  like  case, 


600  "POLITICS"  FROM  1876  TO  1898 

twenty  years  later,  the  Court  at  first  divided  equally,  four 
to  four.  Public  feeling  was  intense.  The  conservative 
moneyed  classes  were  represented  before  the  Court  by  the 
great  lawyer,  Rufus  Choate,  who  declared  that  such  a  tax 
would  "scatter  to  the  winds  the  very  keystone  of  civilization 
-  the  rights  of  private  property."  On  the  recovery  of  a 
sick  Justice,  the  case  was  heard  again.  The  Justice  before 
absent  now  voted  for  the  tax ;  but  Justice  Shir  as,  who  had 
before  voted  for  it,  now  changed  to  the  opposition.  Con 
servatives  exulted  loudly.  Said  the  New  York  Sun,  "The 
wave  of  socialistic  revolution  has  gone  far,  but  it  breaks 
at  the  foot  of  the  ultimate  bulwark  set  up  for  the  protection 
of  our  liberties.  Five  to  four,  the  Court  stands  like  a 
rock."  On  the  other  hand  the  stern  disappointment  of  the 
reform  elements  was  voiced  by  Justice  Harlan  in  an  able 
dissenting  opinion  which  was  marked  by  unusual  emotion 
and  which  let  it  be  seen  that  the  Justice  felt  that  the  great 
Court  had  struck  a  cruel  blow  at  American  institutions. 
The  modern  verdict  upon  the  decision,  and  upon  its  effect 
on  society,  is  expressed  well  by  Professor  Davis  Rich  Dewey  : 
"Interest  in  the  tax  itself  was  lost  sight  of  in  the  reve 
lation  of  fickleness  and  uncertainty  in  the  highest  court  of 
the  land."  It  was  particularly  unfortunate  that  such 
shiftiness  should  have  operated  as  a  protection  to  the  wealthy 
classes  only. 

The  election  of  1896  was  won  by  the  Republicans  on  the 
issue  of  "sound  money"  (page  608) ;  butPresident  McKinley 
The  Dingley  claimed  the  victory  as  a  mandate  to  renew  the  high 
Tariff,  1897  protection  policy  with  which  he  had  personally 
identified  himself.  Accordingly,  a  special  session  of  Congress 
enacted  the  Dingley  Tariff,  raising  the  average  rate  to  57  per 
cent.  The  bill  did  provide,  it  is  true,  that,  during  the  two 
years  following,  the  President  might  make  treaties  with  for 
eign  countries,  abating  a  fifth  of  the  Dingley  rates  in  return 
for  concessions  to  American  commerce ;  and  the  Republican 
masses  were  led  to  look  upon  the  exorbitant  rates  mainly 
as  a  club  to  force  reciprocity.  President  McKinley,  from 
time  to  time,  submitted  seven  such  treaties  to  the  Senate,  but 


THE  TARIFF  601 

that  body,  with  an  extreme  of  bad  faith,  hearkening  only 
to  the  special  interests  which  controlled  the  seats  or  fortunes 
of  many  members,  failed  to  ratify.  As  with  the  And  "  red- 
preceding  tariff,  the  bargain  by  which  high  rates  procity" 
had  been  secured  was  broken ;  and  again  the  loss  fell  upon 
the  poor. 

Wherever  the  tariff  did  shield  a  raw  material  from  foreign 
competition  (as  with  wool),  it  gave  a  correspondingly 
higher  protection  to  the  manufacturer  who  was  to  use  that 
material.  Thus  the  wearer  of  woolen  goods  paid  a  double 
tax,  —  one  to  the  wool  grower,  and  another  to  the  manu 
facturer.  But,  as  a  rule,  those  items  which  had  been  added 
to  the  bill  with  a  pretense  of  protecting  the  farmers  proved 
again  deceptive.  A  duty  was  placed  on  hides ;  but  the 
advantage  was  monopolized  by  the  packing  houses.  The 
cattle  raiser  got  none  of  it.  He  had  to  sell,  as  before,  to 
the  trust  at  its  own  price  ;  but  the  trust  could  now  make  the 
shoe  manufacturer  pay  more  for  leather.  And  the  only 
noticeable  result  to  the  cattle  raiser  —  and  to  every  other 
"ultimate  consumer"  -was  a  higher  price  for  shoes  and 
harness.  Critics  pointed  out,  too,  that  the  prohibitive 
duties  on  many  foreign  imports  made  it  easier  for  monopo 
listic  combinations  to  control  prices  and  output.  The 
years  following  the  enactment  of  the  Dingley  Tariff  were 
just  the  years  of  most  rapid  development  of  such  monopolies. 
"  The  tariff  is  the  mother  of  the  trusts"  became  a  popular  cry. 

Manufactures,  of  course,  were  tremendously  stimulated. 
They   now   used   most   of   the   raw   material   produced   in 
America.     American  mills  forged  their  way  into 
the  markets  of  the  world,  and  underbid  English 
and    German     manufacturers    in    Russia,    India,  and  the 
China,  and  Australia.     American  machinery  even  Jiving 
invaded  France   and   England.     To  do  this,  the 
American     manufacturer    sold    his    goods    cheaper    abroad 
than  at  home,  and,-  in  part,  was  enabled  to  undersell  the 
foreign  manufacturer  abroad  by  means  of  the  unreasonable 
profits  wrung  from  the  American  consumer. 

For  a  time  the  country  was  entranced  by  the  appearance 


602  "POLITICS"  FROM   1876  TO  1898 

of  "prosperity."  But  gradually  the  idea  .gained  ground 
that  this  was  a  manufacturer's  prosperity,  paid  for  by  the 
consumer.  The  cost  of  living  rose  so  rapidly  as  to  become  a 
byword.  Between  1896  and  1904  it  was  computed  to  have 
increased  a  fourth.1  This  amounted,  of  course,  to  a  savage 
cut  in  real  wages  and  in  all  fixed  incomes,  and  it  rapidly 
created  a  serious  problem  for  people  of  small  means,  to  be 
tremendously  augmented  soon  by  the  more  rapid  rise  after 
the  World  War. 

1  The  conservative  figures  of  the  Bureau  of  Labor  place  the  increase  in  the 
period  1890-1909  at  26^  per  cent.  Of  course  the  tariff  was  only  one  of  several 
factors  in  the  rise  of  prices.  Another  factor  was  the  increased  volume  of  gold  — 
in  which  prices  are  measured  (page  619).  But  this  last  factor  operated  all  over 
the  world,  —  in  England,  presumably,  as  strongly  as  in  America.  The  rise  of 
prices  in  England,  however,  down  to  the  beginning  of  the  European  War  in  1914, 
was  only  about  a  third  of  that  in  the  United  States. 


CHAPTER  XXXIX 

ANOTHER  PHASE   OF  THE  POLITICAL   STORY 

GREENBACKS  AND  FREE  SILVER 

FOR  thirteen  years  after  the  Civil  War,  the  "Treasury 
notes"  and  the  National  bank  notes  were  the  only  money 
in  circulation.     The   government  redeemed  part  (( 
of  this  "War  currency"    -by  issuing  new  bonds  backs" 
in  exchange  for  it  —  but  gold  did  not  come  out  of  after  the 
hiding.     This  paper  money  remained  below  par, 
usually  at  about  80  cents,  and  its  value  fluctuated  some 
what,  as  Wall  Street  speculators  forced  gold  up  or  down. 
In  the  summer  of   1869  Jay  Gould  and  "Jim"  Fiske  made 
an  extreme  attempt  to   "corner"  gold,   and  on  a  certain 
"Black  Friday"  they  drove  its  price  up  to  162.   "Black 
In  other  words,  a  dollar  of  paper  money  was  driven  Friday  " 
down  in  value  to  61  cents,  and  business  everywhere  was  tot 
tering  to  bankruptcy.     Gould  and  Fiske  had  tried  zealously 
to  cultivate  intimacy  with  President  Grant  and  to  woo  him 
to  their  plans ;  but  now,  with  the  President's  approval,  the 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury  saved  the  business  of  the  country, 
and  crushed  the  Wall  Street  pirates,  by  throwing  upon  the 
market  many  millions  of  the  government's  gold  reserve. 

The  government  paid  the  interest  on  all  its  bonds  in  gold. 
This  policy  was  necessary  to  preserve  the  nation's  credit, 
but  it  had  a  repulsive  side.  The  man  who  earned  fifty 
dollars  in  the  field,  or  who  received  that  amount  as  interest 
on  a  small  loan,  had  to  take  his  pay  at  its  face  in  paper; 
but  the  wealthy  holder  of  a  government  bond,  to  whom 
fifty  dollars  of  interest  was  due,  could  exchange  his  gold  for 
sixty  or  seventy  dollars  in  paper.  Another  kind  of  wrong 
was  still  more  serious.  In  war  time,  paper  money  was 
worth  perhaps  fifty  cents  on  a  dollar.  If  a  farmer  then 

603 


604  "POLITICS"  FROM   1876  TO   1898 

mortgaged  his  two  thousand  dollar  farm  for  half  its  value, 
he  received  $1000  in  greenbacks  (or  $500  in  gold).  Now, 
as  paper  appreciated,  approaching  par,  and  prices  fell, 
the  farmer's  debt  was  doubled  by  the  juggling  tricks  of  a 
varying  currency. 

Many  men  who  saw  the  abuse  jumped  at  a  deceptive 
remedy.  The  Democratic  platform  of  1868  called  for  "one 
currency  for  the  producer  and  the  bond  holder,"  and  urged 
that  the  government  should  pay  its  interest  in  greenbacks 
except  when  the  bond  specified  gold.  Local  "Greenback" 
parties  went  further,  demanding  "fiat  money"  as  a  perma 
nent  policy.  In  1876  the  Greenback  organization  became 
national,  with  a  candidate  for  the  Presidency;  and  two 
years  later,  it  cast  a  million  votes. 

But  meantime  the  Republican  party  stood  victoriously  for 
the  "resumption  of  specie  payment."  Congress  provided 
"Resump-  ^or  ^ne  accumulation  of  a  gold  reserve  for  that 
tion"in  purpose,  and,  January  1,  1879,  the  Treasury  an 
nounced  its  readiness  to  exchange  gold  for  its 
greenbacks.  Paper  money  rose  at  once  to  par-  "as  good 
as  gold."  A  third  of  a  billion  remained  in  circulation;  but 
ever  since  then  the  notes  have  been  redeemable  on  demand. 

The  paper-money  question  belonged  to  the  Reconstruction 
period.  From  1890  to  about  1900  another  "cheap  money" 
"  Free  agitation  cast  all  other  issues  into  the  background, 

silver "  This  was  an  unfortunate  demand  for  "free  silver." 
Until  1873  any  one  could  present  gold  or  silver  bullion  at  any 
government  mint  and  receive  back  the  value  in  coin.  For 
forty  years  the  law  had  fixed  the  "ratio"  between  the  two 
metals  as  "16  to  1."  At  the  beginning  of  that  period,  and 
for  long  before,  an  ounce  of  gold  was  worth  sixteen  ounces 
of  silver  for  commercial  purposes ;  and  so  the  silver  dollar 
was  made  sixteen  times  as  heavy  as  the  gold  dollar.  After 
1850,  the  gold  discoveries  in  California  cheapened  the  value 
of  gold ;  and  the  little  silver  that  was  mined  between  that 
time  and  1870  could  be  used  more  profitably  in  the  arts 
than  at  the  mint,  so  that  very  little  silver  was  coined. 


"GREENBACKS"  AND  "FREE  SILVER"  605 

In  1870  the  market  ratio  of  the  metals  was  15.57.  A 
silver  dollar  would  have  been  worth  $1.03,  and  they  had  all 
been  melted  down  for  this  profit. 

But,  about  1870,  new  silver  mines  in  Nevada  and  Colorado 
began  to  flood  the  markets  with  silver.  Then,  in  1873, 
Congress  "demonetized"  silver,  —  ceasing  to  authorize  its 
coinage,  except  in  small  quantities  for  the  oriental  trade, 
and  refusing  legal-tender  character  at  home  to  these  "trade 
dollars."  At  the  same  time,  European  countries  began  to 
abandon  "bimetalism"  for  a  gold  standard.  The  increased 
output  of  silver,  together  with  this  decreased  demand  for  it, 
forced  down  its  value  rapidly.  By  1876,  the  ratio  of  silver 
to  gold  had  fallen  to  17.87 ;  and  by  1893  to  28.25,  so  that  a 
silver  "dollar"  of  the  old  weight  was  worth  only  56  cents  in 
gold ;  but  the  silver  mine  owners  called  vociferously  for  coin 
age  at  the  old  rate.  Moreover,  the  farmers  of  the  West  and 
many  ardent  reformers  were  persuaded  that  the  "crime  of 
'73 "  had  been  manipulated  by  the  money  monopolists  of 
Wall  Street  to  reduce  the  volume  of  the  currency,  and  so 
enhance  the  value  of  their  wealth.  The  more  thoughtful 
advocates  of  silver  believed  that  its  unlimited  coinage  by 
the  United  States  would  restore  silver  to  its  old  market 
value  because  of  the  increased  demand ;  but  the  larger 
body  of  its  supporters  were  animated  by  the  crude  fallacies 
of  fiat  money,  such  as  had  inspired  the  Greenback  party. 

It  was  quite  true  that  there  was  not  enough  gold  coined 
to  make  a  proper  basis  for  the  growing  business  of  the 
country.  Consequently,  money  was  appreciating  in  value, 
and  prices  depreciating.  Creditors  profited ;  debtors,  like 
farmers  with  mortgages  to  meet,  suffered.  All  reformers 
saw  these  evils.  Some  magnified  them  unduly,  and  caught 
impulsively  at  the  proffered  remedy  of  making  silver  a 
legal  tender  at  the  old  rate.  Their  real  problem  was  to 
curb  the  growth  of  special  privilege  in  business  and  of 
corruption  in  politics,  but  they  turned  aside  for  a  mis 
leading  economic  doctrine.  More  logical  reformers  felt 
that  a  depreciation  of  the  coinage  would  entail  all  the  dis- 


606  "POLITICS"  FROM   1876  TO  1898 

asters  of  cheap  money  and  bring  in  evils  worse  than  those 
to  be  cured.  This  unhappy  division  seriously  delayed  the 
reform  of  fundamental  troubles  in  American  life. 

Both  Republicans  and  Democrats  shirked  a  positive 
position  as  to  silver.  Accordingly,  in  the  West  and  South 
The  there  sprang  up  the  new  Populist  party,  with  a 

Populist  platform  calling  for  the  unlimited  coinage  of  sil- 
party  ver  at  16  to  1,  for  a  graduated  income  tax,  postal 

savings  banks,  the  "Australian  ballot,"  direct  election  of 
United  States  Senators,  an  eight-hour  day,  government  guar 
antee  of  bank  deposits,  and  government  ownership  of  rail 
roads  and  of  other  natural  monopolies.  To  the  East  all  this 
seemed  wild-eyed  anarchism.  But  in  the  Presidential  elec 
tion  of  1892,  General  James  B.  Weaver,  the  Populist  candi 
date,  secured  22  electors,  with  more  than  a  million  votes,  to 
about  five  and  a  half  millions  to  each  of  the  main  parties. 
Two  years  earlier,  the  party  had  captured  several  State  gov 
ernments  in  the  West  and  South,  and  had  sent  forty 
representatives  to  Congress. 

This  Populist  success  induced  Congress,  in  1890,  to  pass 
"the  Sherman  Act"  ordering  a  slight  increase  in  silver  coin 
age.  The  increase  in  demand  raised  silver  for  a  time ;  but 
in  1893  the  British  government  demonetized  that  metal 
in  India,  and  it  shrank  to  a  lower  point  than  ever  before. 
Gold  now  was  exported  with  a  rush,  and  that  remaining  in 
the  country  was  hoarded. 

A  periodic  crisis,  due  once  more  to  over-investment  on 
credit,  seems  to  have  been  about  due ;  and  it  was  hastened 
The  crisis  by  widespread  distrust  of  the  currency  and  by  un- 
of  1893  certainty  as  to  future  action  by  Congress.  In  1893 
the  crash  came.  Creditors  began  to  insist  on  payments  in 
gold.  Nearly  six  hundred  banks  closed  their  doors,  and  more 
than  fifteen  thousand  firms  went  to  the  wall,  with  losses 
amounting  to  a  third  of  a  billion.  Industry  was  prostrated 
as  at  no  previous  panic.  Farmers  lost  their  homes,  and  the 
improvements  of  years,  on  small  mortgages.  Cities  were 
thronged  with  hundreds  of  thousands  of  unemployed  and 


"GREENBACKS"  AND  "FREE  SILVER"  607 

desperate   men.     Every    large    place    had    its    free    "soup 
kitchen,"  and  many  towns,   for  the  first  time  in  America, 
opened   "relief  works,"   to   provide   the  starving  Cieveiand 
with  employment.     And,  in  this  crisis,  President  and  the 
Cleveland    had    to    increase    the    National    debt  l 
heavily  by  selling  bonds,  in  order  to  maintain  the  essential 
gold  reserve  in  the  treasury. 

The  law  which  had  brought  about  Resumption  in  1879  had 
very  properly  made  it  the  duty  of  the  President  to  maintain  a  gold 
reserve  in  the  Treasury  sufficient  to  meet  any  paper  money  pre 
sented  for  redemption.  Now,  in  a  few  months,  nearly  half  the 
reserve  was  drawn  out  (down  to  68  millions)  by  Treasury  notes 
so  presented,  while  the  panic  had  cut  down  the  government's 
revenues,  so  that  no  funds  were  available  with  which  to  buy  gold. 
Thus  President  Cleveland  had  to  increase  the  National  debt  by 
selling  bonds.  The  banks  paid  gold  for  these  bonds ;  but,  owing 
to  the  clumsy  confusion  of  our  currency  laws,  they  drew  most 
of  this  gold  out  of  the  Treasury,  just  beforehand,  by  presenting 
Treasury  notes  there.  "What  was  poured  in  through  the  funnel 
was  first  drawn  out  through  the  bunghole."  By  a  quaintly 
vicious  feature  of  the  law,  too,  the  Treasury  notes  had  to 
be  at  once  reissued.  Thus,  when  the  government  had  again  to 
sell  bonds,  the  same  process  could  be  repeated  with  the  same 
currency,  —  in  the  dizziest  of  circles,  —  so  that  to  maintain  a 
balance  of  a  few  millions  of  gold  the  President  had  to  sell  264 
millions  in  bonds.  To  lessen  the  evil,  he  called  the  Wall  Street 
bankers  into  conference,  to  pledge  them  to  take  the  bonds  without 
withdrawing  the  gold  to  do  it  with ;  but  he  was  at  once  accused 
by  the  Radicals  of  granting  the  money  power  unreasonable 
secret  privileges. 

The  campaign  of  1896  (page  600)  was  a  crisis  in  American 
history.     President  Cleveland  had  alienated  the  radical  wing 
of  the  Democratic  party  by  uncompromising  hos-  The  election 
tility  to  silver  legislation,1  and  the  party  split  on  of  1896 
that  issue.     The  National  Convention  afforded  a  dramatic 

1  It  is,  perhaps,  fairer  to  say  that  this  attitude  seemed  to  the  Radicals  one 
more  proof  of  Cleveland's  alliance  with  the  "Money  Power,"  seen  also,  as  it 
appeared  to  them,  in  his  policy  in  the  Chicago  strike  (page  649) .  Cleveland  was  a 
plodding,  patient  man  of  rugged  honesty,  and,  for  his  day,  he  was  a  progressive 


608  "POLITICS"  FROM  1876  TO  1898 

scene.  William  Jennings  Bryan  of  Nebraska,  a  young  man 
hardly  known  in  the  East,  swept  the  great  assembly  re- 
sistlessly  by  an  impassioned  speech  of  splendid 
William  oratory  and  deep  sincerity.  The  contest  between 
Jennings  silver  and  gold  he  pictured  as  a  contest  of  wealth 
against  industry.  The  gold  men  had  made  much 
of  what  they  called  the  business  interests.  But,  said 
Bryan,  "the  farmer  who  goes  forth  in  the  morning  and  toils 
all  day,  and,  by  applying  brain  and  muscle  to  natural 
resources,  creates  wealth,  is  as  much  a  business  man  as  is 
the  man  who  goes  upon  the  Board  of  Trade  and  bets  on  the 
price  of  grain."  Turning  to  the  "gold"  delegates,  he  ex 
claimed,  "You  shall  not  press  down  upon  the  brow  of  labor 
this  crown  of  thorns.  You  shall  not  crucify  mankind  upon 
this  cross  of  gold." 

With  tremendous  enthusiasm,  the  Convention  declared, 
two  to  one,  for  the  "unlimited  coinage  of  both  silver  and 
gold  at  the  ratio  of  sixteen  to  one,"  and  nominated  Bryan 
for  the  presidency.  To  men  of  conservative  tendencies 
and  associations,  the  new  leader  seemed  a  demagogue. 
The  Democratic  Louisville  Courier- Journal  denounced  him 
as  a  "dishonest  dodger,"  a  "daring  adventurer,"  a  "political 
faker";  and  the  New  York  Tribune  reviled  him  as  "a 
willing  puppet  in  the  blood-imbrued  hands  of  revolutionists, 
—  apt  at  lies  and  forgeries  and  blasphemies,  the  rival  of 
Benedict  Arnold  and  Jefferson  Davis  in  treason  to  the 
Republic"  !  A  strong  faction  of  the  Democratic  party  took 
the  name  of  "Gold  Democrats"  and  nominated  a  ticket  of 
their  own.  The  Republicans  nominated  William  McKinley 
on  a  "sound  money"  platform. 

The   Democratic    campaign   was   hampered   by   lack   of 

statesman,  deserving  of  more  recognition  from  radical  reformers  than  he  received. 
In  his  final  message  to  Congress,  after  his  defeat  had  put  him  "out  of  politics,"  he 
warned  the  nation  that  great  fortunes  were  no  longer  the  result  solely  of  sturdy 
industry  and  enlightened  foresight,  but  largely  of  the  "discriminating  javor  of  the 
government"  and  of  "undue  exactions  from  the  masses  of  our  people."  After  leav 
ing  the  Presidency,  his  services  as  a  lawyer  were  sought  by  great  corporations,  but 
he  always  refused  their  retainers.  No  other  president  from  Lincoln  to  Roosevelt 
did  so  much  to  arouse  a  progressive  movement  in  this  nation. 


"GREENBACKS"  AND  "FREE  SILVER"  609 

money ;  but  the  most  was  made  of  Mr.  Bryan's  oratory. 
Candidates  had  previously  taken  small  part  in  campaigning. 
Mr.  Bryan  traveled  eighteen  thousand  miles  and  spoke 
to  vast  numbers  of  people.  The  Republican  coffers  were 
supplied  lavishly  by  the  moneyed  interests  of  the  country ; 
and  the  campaign  was  managed  by  Mark  Hanna,  a  typical 
representative  of  the  "big  business"  interests,  —  a  virile 
and  very  likeable  character,  who  honestly  believed  that  the 
government  ought  to  be  "an  adjunct  of  business,"  and  who, 
his  admirers  confessed,  got  what  he  went  after  in  politics 
without  scrupulous  regard  to  means.  Workingmen  were 
intimidated  by  posted  notices  that  the  factories  would 
close  if  the  Democrats  won ;  and  many  great  business 
concerns  placed  orders  with  manufacturers  with  a  provision 
for  cancellation  if  Bryan  were  elected.  This  fear  of  busi 
ness  catastrophe  (a  fear  largely  manufactured)  was  a  chief 
factor  in  the  Republican  success.  But  as  Cleveland  had 
committed  the  Democratic  party  to  tariff  reform,  so  Bryan 
had  now  committed  it  for  a  time  to  the  cause  of  the  masses 
against  the  "special  interests"  and  "privileged"  capital. 
Failing  to  make  him  out  a  villain,  the  conservatives  tried 
now  for  awhile  to  take  him  as  a  jest ;  but  all  men  had  soon 
to  recognize  that  a  new  force  had  come  into  American  life. 

At  this  point  came  an  interruption  to  normal  development, 
—  the  Spanish  War  and  the  question  of  imperialism. 


CHAPTER  XL 

AMERICA  A  WORLD   POWER 

FOR  some  time  our  growing  commercial  interests  had  in 
spired  a  more  aggressive  foreign  policy.  Three  notable 
incidents  in  this  line  preceded  the  war  with  Spain. 

1.  In  Harrison's  administration  the  energetic  Elaine  was 
Secretary  of  State.     A  cardinal  point  in  his  policy  was  to  ex 
tend   the  influence   of    the    United    States    over 

American  Spanish  America.  In  1889  he  brought  together 
Congress  a^  Washington  a  notable  Pan-American  Congress 
which  furthered  commercial  reciprocity  and  ex 
pressed  a  desire  for  standing  treaties  of  arbitration  between 
all  American  nations. 

2.  For   fifty   years,    the   United   States   had   held   close 
relations  with  Hawaii.     The  islands  had  accepted  Christian- 
The  revo-      *ty   from  American  missionaries ;    and  American 
lution  in        planters  and  merchants  were  the  chief  element  in  a 

considerable  White  population.  American  capital, 
too,  was  largely  interested  in  sugar  raising  in  the  islands. 
The  native  government,  under  the  influence  of  English  and 
American  ideas,  had  been  brought  to  the  form  of  a  constitu 
tional  monarchy.  In  January,  1893,  a  revolution  deposed  the 
native  queen  and  set  up  a  provisional  republic.  The  leading 
spirits  of  the  new  government  were  Americans,  and  they 
asked  for  annexation  to  the  United  States.  To  support  this 
revolution,  the  United  States  minister  to  the  old  government 
ran  up  the  United  States  flag,  virtually  declared  a  protec 
torate,  and  secured  a  force  of  marines  from  an  American 
vessel  in  the  harbor  to  overawe  the  natives. 

In  his  remaining  weeks  of  office,  President  Harrison  tried 
to  hurry  through  a  treaty  of  annexation;  but  Cleveland, 
on  his  accession,  withdrew  the  treaty  from  the  Senate,  and 

610 


THE  VENEZUELA  ARBITRATION  611 

sent  a  special  commissioner  to  the  islands  to  investigate. 
The  report  revealed  the  revolution  as  a  conspiracy,  in  which 
the  American  minister  had  taken  a  leading  part  to  over 
throw  the  government  to  which  he  was  accredited  ;  and  the 
provisional  republic,  it  was  shown,  was  supported  by  only  a 
small  fraction  of  the  population.  Cleveland  attempted  to 
undo  this  "flagrant  wrong"  to  a  weak  state.  Despite  the 
violent  outcry  of  opposition  papers,  he  "hauled  down  the 
American  flag."  Skillfully  intrenched  in  possession  by 
this  time,  however,  the  republican  government  maintained 
itself,  unstably,  against  the  native  dynasty. 

3.  For  half  a  century  an  obscure  dispute  had  dragged 
along  as  to  the  boundary  between  Venezuela  and  British 
Guiana.  In  the  eighties  gold  was  discovered,  and  The 
English  miners  began  to  crowd  into  the  disputed  Venezuela 
wilderness.  By  1895  the  quarrel  was  acute.  The  arbitration 
English  government  made  it  clear  to  Venezuela  that  it 
intended  to  occupy  the  territory.  Venezuela  had  already 
appealed  to  the  United  States  for  protection ;  and  now  our 
government  insisted  vigorously  that  England  submit  the 
matter  to  arbitration.  Lord  Salisbury,  the  English  prime 
minister,  declined.  Then  President  Cleveland  electrified  the 
world  by  a  message  to  Congress  (December  17,  1895), 
recommending  the  creation  of  an  American  commission  to 
determine  the  true  boundary,  and  pointing  out  that  war 
must  follow  if  England  should  refuse  to  accept  its  award. 
Then  England  awoke  to  the  fact  that  a  serious  quarrel  was 
in  progress.  People,  press,  and  public  men  made  clear  a 
warm  friendship  for  the  United  States  wholly  unsuspected 
by  the  mass  of  Americans,1  and  it  was  immediately  evident 
that  even  the  irritating  tone  of  American  diplomacy  could 
not  arouse  a  war  feeling.  War  with  the  United  States 
on  such  an  issue,  said  Lord  Rosebery,  the  Liberal  leader, 
"would  be  the  greatest  crime  on  record";  and  the  Con 
servative  leader  in  parliament,  Mr.  Balfour,  added  that 

1  This  aspect  of  the  affair  was  made  more  prominent  by  a  remarkable  display  a 
few  weeks  later  of  war  feeling  in  England  against  Germany. 


612  AMERICA  BECOMES  A  WORLD  POWER 

such  a  contest  would  be  invested  "with  the  unnatural 
horrors  of  civil  war."  The  ministry  now  offered  to  accept 
arbitration,  suggesting,  however,  an  international  com 
mission,  in  place  of  one  appointed  by  our  government  alone, 
and  the  matter  was  so  arranged.  The  commission  reported 
in  1899,  favoring  the  English  contention  for  the  most  part, 
—  a  result  perfectly  satisfactory  to  the  United  States. 

The  English  ministry  now  proposed  to  the  United  States 
a  standing  treaty  for  arbitration  of  future  disputes  between 
the  two  countries.  The  treaty  was  drawn  up,  and  was 
strongly  urged  upon  the  Senate  by  President  Cleveland  and 
later  by  President  McKinley.  But  the  Senate,  now  in  a 
period  of  degradation,  preferred  to  play  politics,  and  refused 
to  ratify  this  proposal  for  an  advance  in  world  peace. 

Then  came  the  Spanish-American  War.  After  1824, 
only  Cuba  and  Porto  Rico  were  left  to  Spain  of  her  once 
The  Cuban  wide-lying  American  empire.  In  Cuba,  revolt 
revolution  was  chronic.  Taxation  was  exorbitant;  trade 
was  shackled,  in  Spanish  interests;  and  the  natives  were 
despised  by  Spanish  officials.  In  1895  the  island  was  once 
more  ablaze  with  revolt,  —  organized  in  great  measure  by 
a  Cuban  Junta  in  the  United  States  and  aided  materially 
by  filibustering  expeditions  from  our  shores.  On  both  sides 
the  war  was  barbarous.  In  particular,  the  cruel  policy 
of  the  Spanish  commander,  Weyler,  caused  deadly  suffering 
to  women  and  children,  gathered  into  reconcentrado  camps 
without  proper  care  or  food.  The  "Gem  of  the  Antilles" 
was  rapidly  turning  to  a  desert  and  a  graveyard. 

American  capitalists  had  large  interests  in  the  sugar  in 
dustry  in  the  island,  and  used  powerful  influences,  open  and 
secret,  to  secure  American  intervention,  with  a  view  to 
subsequent  annexation  by  Congress.  Such  forces  played 
skillfully  upon  the  humanitarian  sympathies  of  the  American 
people,  and  on  our  habitual  inclination  to  aid  any  movement 
on  this  continent  for  political  independence.  In  1897  the 
country  was  seething  with  discontent  at  the  continuance 
of  Spanish  rule  in  Cuba,  and  Congress  was  eager  for  war; 


ROOSEVELT'S  ROUGH  RIDERS  613 

but  for  some  months  more  President  McKinley  held  such 
impulses  in  check  while  he  tried  to  secure  satisfactory  con 
cessions  to  Cuba  from  Spain. 

A  new  Spanish  ministry,  led  by  the  Liberal  Sagasta, 
did  recall  Weyler,  placed  the  war  upon  a  "civilized"  foot 
ing,  and  offered  the  Cubans  generous  concessions  ;  „  Remem_ 
but  a  new  situation  hurried  America  into  the  war.  ber  the 
February  15, 1898,  the  American  battleship  Maine,  Maine  " 
visiting  in  Havana  harbor,  was  blown  up,  with  the  loss  of 
260  of  her  men.  The  explosion  may  have  come  from  a  subma 
rine  mine  operated  by  Cubans  to  produce  the  results  which 
followed,  or  the  mine  may  possibly  have  been  operated  by  a 
few  Spanish  officers.  No  one  now  seriously  believes  that 
the  Spanish  government  was  responsible.  At  the  moment, 
however,  this  was  the  almost  universal  assumption ;  and  a 
vengeful  cry  for  blood  —  Remember  the  Maine  —  reinforced 
irresistibly  the  previous  call  for  American  interference. 
Congress  gave  a  solemn  pledge  that  the  United  States  would 
not  hold  Cuba  for  herself ;  and  the  American  forces  soon 
completed  the  task  of  expelling  Spain. 

A  picturesque  feature  of  the  brief  four  months'  struggle 
was  the  dashing  career  of  the  ''Rough  Riders."     Officially, 
this   force   was   the    "First  Volunteer  Regiment  R00seveit's 
of  Cavalry."     It  was  raised  by  Theodore  Roose-  "Rough 
velt,  largely  from  his  old  associates  among  ranchers  * 
and  cowboys  in  the   West,    with  a   sprinkling   of   Eastern 
football  stars.     Roosevelt  resigned   as  Assistant  Secretary 
of  the  Navy  to  become  Lieutenant   Colonel    of    this   regi 
ment.     The  decisive   land-battle    of    the  war    was    fought 
stubbornly  along  the  paths  of  a  tropical  jungle  near   the 
city  of  Santiago,  July  1,  2,  and  3.     Roosevelt  marched  his 
troops   all   night,    June    30,    to   be    in    at    the    fight,    and 
led    them    gallantly    in    "the    soldiers'    charge"    up    San 
Juan  Hill  into  the  Spanish  intrenchments.     The  At 
fame  of  "the   Colonel"  from  these  achievements,   San  Juan 
duly  "featured"  by  the  newspaper  men  with  the  troops, 
was  soon  to  give  a  new  turn  to  American  politics,  —  not  the 
least  of  the  results  of  the  war. 


614  WAR  WITH  SPAIN 

San  Juan  made  it  impossible  for  the  Spaniards  to  long 
hold  the  harbor  of  Santiago.  They  had  collected  a  strong 
Battle  of  fleet  there,  to  threaten  the  seacoast  cities  of 
Santiago  America,  but  it  had  been  at  once  blockaded  by  a 
stronger  American  squadron.  Fearing  capture  by  our  land 
army,  the  Spanish  fleet  now  put  to  sea  and  scattered  in 
flight.  In  the  four  hours'  running  fight  that  followed,  every 
Spanish  vessel  was  sunk  or  driven  a  blackened  wreck  on 
the  shore,  every  man  dead  or  captive,  while  no  American 
vessel  was  injured  and  only  one  sailor  was  killed. 

At  the  outbreak  of  the  war,  unfriendly  German  and  French 
naval  authorities  had  not  hesitated  to  express  their  con- 
George  viction  (and  apparently  their  hope)  that  the 
Dewey  at  Spanish  fleet  would  quickly  drive  the  American 
from  the  sea.  But  even  before  this  battle  of 
Santiago,  in  a  still  more  famous  struggle  the  American  navy 
had  proven  its  superiority  in  sailing  and  in  gunnery.  When 
war  was  declared,  Commodore  George  Dewey  was  in  command 
of  a  small  squadron  on  the  coast  of  China.  He  sailed  at 
once  for  the  Philippines,  then  a  Spanish  possession,  and,  on 
May  1,  entered  Manila  Bay  over  mine-strewn  waters, 
destroyed  or  captured  the  Spanish  fleet  under  the  guns  of 
the  land  fortress,  and,  in  cooperation  with  native  insurgents, 
began  the  siege  of  the  city. 

The  blockade  of  Manila  had  its  own  spectacular  incidents. 
Soon  after  Dewey's  naval  victory,  European  men-of-war 
And  von  began  to  gather  in  the  harbor, — among  them,  three 
Diedrich  English  ships  and  a  strong  German  squadron. 
Germany  had  shown  much  sympathy  for  Spain,  and  the 
German  commander  at  Manila,  Admiral  von  Diedrich,  now 
acted  toward  the  Americans  in  a  most  disagreeable  and  irri 
tating  manner.  He  repeatedly  disregarded  the  American 
patrol  regulations,  and  finally  landed  supplies  for  the 
Spaniards  in  flat  opposition  to  the  American  blockade. 
This  brought  a  crisis.  Dewey  sent  him  a  brusque  protest, 
adding  as  the  messenger  was  setting  out,  -  "And  say  to 
Admiral  von  Diedrich  that  if  he  wants  a  fight,  he  can  have 
it  now."  In  a  rage,  von  Diedrich  hurried  to  Captain 


GEORGE  DEWEY  AT  MANILA  615 

Chichester,  the  commander  of  the  English  war  ships,  and 
asked  that  officer  bluntly  whether  he  had  instructions  as  to 
what  to  do  if  a  conflict  took  place  between  the  Germans  and 
Americans.  "I  have,"  replied  the  Briton.  "May  I  ask 
what  they  are?"  insisted  the  German.  "Ah,"  drawled 
Chichester,  "only  two  persons  here  know  that,  —  myself 
and  Commodore  Dewey."  Thereafter  von  Diedrich  was 
better  mannered. 

From  the  opening  of  the  war,  it  is  now  known,  Germany 
wished  Europe  to  interfere  upon  the  side  of  Spain,  and 
she  was  kept  from  active  hostility  mainly  by  the  And  English 
pronounced  friendliness  of  the  English  govern-  sympathy 
ment  for  America.  And  this  friendly  English  feeling  was 
characteristic  of  all  classes  in  that  country.  American 
visitors  in  England  during  the  war  tell  us,  often  with 
amazement,  how  at  the  movies  a  picture  of  an  American 
ship  or  an  American  officer  always  brought  the  audience 
to  its  feet  in  cheers,  while  Spanish  pictures  were  signals 
for  catcalls  and  jeers. 

A  chief  lesson  from  the  war  was  the  unpreparedness  and 
inefficiency  of  the  War  Department.  The  Spanish  surrender 
in  Cuba  came  none  too  soon.  A  few  days  more  Government 
would  have  seen  the  American  army  routed  by  inefficiency 
disease.  Medicines  were  lacking ;  transportation  was  in 
sufficient  ;  troops  were  sent  to  Cuba  in  midsummer  clothed 
in  sweltering  woolens,  with  repulsive  "embalmed  beef"  as 
a  large  part  of  their  food.  Red  tape  and  mismanagement 
prevented  any  improvement  even  for  some  weeks  after  the 
struggle  was  over,  until,  largely  at  Roosevelt's  suggestion, 
a  number  of  officers  joined  in  a  "round  robin,"  making  the 
disgraceful  and  dangerous  conditions  public.  Even  at  the 
recruiting  camps  in  America,  sanitation  had  been  shame 
fully  neglected  :  at  Tampa  and  Chickamauga,  more  soldiers 
died  from  dysentery  than  fell  in  battle  in  Cuba. 

In  the  treaty  of  peace,  Spain  left  Cuba  free,  and  ceded  to 
the  United  States  Porto  Rico,  Guam  (in  the  Ladrones),  and 
the  Philippines,  accepting  $20,000,000  in  compensation  for 


616  AFTER  THE  WAR  WITH  SPAIN 

the  last.  Other  territorial  expansion,  too,  came  as  a  result 
of  the  war.  In  1897  President  McKinley  had  revived  the 
New  treaty  to  annex  Hawaii.  The  necessary  two- 

possessions  thirds  vote  in  the  Senate  could  not  be  secured; 
but  after  the  opening  of  the  Spanish  War,  Congress  annexed 
the  Hawaiian  Islands  by  a  joint  resolution  —  as  Texas  had 
been  acquired  many  years  before.  About  the  same  time, 
several  small  islands  in  the  Pacific,  not  claimed  by  any 
civilized  power,  were  seized  for  naval  and  telegraph  stations ; 
and,  in  rearrangements  at  Samoa,  due  to  native  insurrec 
tions  and  to  conflicting  claims  by  England,  Germany,  and 
the  United  States,  this  country  secured  the  most  important 
island  in  that  group. 

In  1900  Hawaii  was  organized  as  a  "Territory"  on  much 
the  usual  self-governing  plan.  Porto  Rico,  with  its  civilized 
but  unfriendly  Spanish  population,  presented  a  difficult 
problem.  At  present,  the  government  contains  a  repre 
sentative  element,  but  real  control  rests  in  officials  appointed 
by  the  United  States. 

On  the  whole  the  American  pledge  to  leave  Cuba  inde 
pendent  was  honorably  kept,  though  the  Cuban  constitu- 
America  tional  convention  (of  1902)  was  required  to  consent 
and  Cuba  that  the  United  States  might  hold  points  on  the 
coast  for  naval  stations  and  should  have  the  right  to 
interfere,  if  necessary,  to  save  the  island  from  foreign  en 
croachment  or  domestic  convulsion. 

Preceding  the  establishment  of  the  Cuban  Republic  by 
this  convention,  there  had  been  a  necessary  three-years 
occupation  by  American  troops  under  General  Leonard 
Wood.  This  military  government  brought  great  blessings 
to  the  island.  It  established  order,  relieved  immediate 
suffering,  organized  a  permanent  and  noble  system  of  hos 
pitals  and  schools,  built  roads,  cleaned  up  cities,  and  created 
adequate  water  supplies.  For  the  first  time  in  140  years 
Havana  was  freed  from  yellow  fever.  In  the  course  of  this 
amazing  and  beneficent  sanitary  work  in  the  pest-ridden 
island,  Major  Walter  Reed,  a  United  States  surgeon,  proved 


THE  SETTLEMENT  617 

that  yellow  fever  is  transmitted  by  the  mosquito  bite.  That 
discovery  ranks  among  the  foremost  achievements  of 
modern  science.  There  is  no  praise  too  warm  for  the  high 
resolve  and  steadfast  heroism  —  unsurpassed  amid  the 
horrors  of  a  battlefield  —  with  which  a  splendid  group  of 
American  officers  risked  their  lives  day  after  day  in  that 
obscure  and  baffling  struggle  against  a  disease  that  had 
long  been  a  chief  scourge  of  the  human  race. 

The  Philippines  contain  115,000  square  miles,  broken 
into  a  thousand  islands.  Two  thirds  of  these  are  too  small 
for  habitation ;  and  half  the  total  area  is  comprised  The 
in  two  islands.  The  eight  million  inhabitants  range  PhmPPines 
from  primitive  savagery,  of  the  poisoned  arrow  stage,  to  civi 
lization,  and  speak  a  score  of  different  tongues  and  dialects. 
Five  sevenths  of  the  whole  number  are  Catholics ;  the  stal 
wart  Moros  are  Mohammedan;  the  "wild"  half  million  are 
divided  among  primitive  superstitions.  The  centuries  of 
Spanish  rule  have  left  much  Spanish  blood,  mixed  with 
native,  in  the  more  civilized  districts ;  and  commercial 
interests  account  for  a  considerable  European  population 
at  Manila  and  some  other  ports. 

In  1896  the  islanders  had  attempted  one  of  their  many  ris 
ings  against  Spanish  rule.  The  Spanish  government  brought 
it  to  a  close  by  promising  reforms  and  paying  the  leader 
Aguinaldo  to  leave  the  islands.  The  reforms  were  not 
carried  out,  and  only  a  part  of  the  promised  money  was 
paid ;  and  when  Dewey  was  about  to  attack  the  Spanish 
in  the  islands,  he  invited  Aguinaldo  to  return  with  him  from 
China,  in  order  to  organize  a  native  insurrection  to  cooperate 
with  the  American  invasion.  The  insurgents  hailed  the 
Americans  as  deliverers,  and  took  an  active  part  in  the 
siege  and  capture  of  Manila.  Soon,  however,  the  American 
commanders  received  instructions  from  Washington  not  to 
treat  the  islanders  as  allies,  but  to  assert  American  sover 
eignty  over  them.  This  led  to  war.  After  two  years  of 
regular  campaigns  against  50,000  American  troops,  the 
natives  took  to  guerrilla  warfare  —  in  which  their  ferocious 


618  AFTER  THE  WAR  WITH  SPAIN 

barbarities  were  sometimes  imitated  all  too  successfully 
by  the  Americans.  In  1902  the  United  States  declared  the 
"rebellion"  subdued. 

It  was  after  much  hesitation  that  President  McKinley's 
administration  decided  to  hold  the  Philippines  as  a  depend- 
"  im  e  enc.v  —  as  England  holds  India.  Certainly  the 
riaiism  "  policy  was  new  for  America,  and  it  was  at  once 
and  the  attacked  vehemently  by  the  Democrats,  and  by 
many  progressive  thinkers  outside  that  party, 
as  Imperialism.  The  Anti-imperialists  urged  that  such  a 
policy  not  only  involved  bad  faith  with  the  Filipinos,  but 
that  it  contravened  the  fundamental  principles  of  our 
Declaration  of  Independence  and  that  it  must  divert  energy 
from  our  own  problems.1 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Imperialists,  or  "Expansionists," 
insisted  that  the  United  States  could  no  longer  shirk  responsi 
bilities  as  a  world  power.  The  Filipinos,  they  said,  were  not 
fit  for  self-government ;  American  sentiment  would  not 
tolerate  returning  them  to  Spain ;  and  Dewey's  conquest 
left  America  answerable  not  only  for  the  Philippines  them 
selves,  but,  more  immediately,  for  European  and  American 
settlers  and  interests  at  Manila.  These  forces  for  expansion 
were  reinforced,  of  course,  by  commercial  greed  and  gross 
pride  of  power. 

Imperialism  was  a  leading  issue  in  the  campaign  of  1900 ; 

but  Mr.  Bryan,  once  more  the  Democratic  candidate,  compli- 

The  election  cated  the  matter  unhappily  by  forcing  into  .the 

Democratic  platform  a  declaration  for  the  dying 

"16  to  1"  cause.    Again  the  reform  forces  were  divided. 

1  Congress  refused  to  recognize  the  Filipinos  as  citizens  of  the  United  States, 
distinctly  rejecting  the  plea  that  "the  Constitution  follows  the  flag."  It  even 
refused  to  include  the  islands  within  the  customs  boundary  of  the  United  States. 
Our  sugar  trust  and  other  protected  interests  demanded  that  the  tariff  on  Philippine 
sugar,  tobacco,  and  some  other  products  be  continued.  In  the  main,  Congress 
complied.  The  islanders  had  expected  a  free  American  market  as  one  of  the  com 
pensations  for  the  lack  of  independence,  and  they  regarded  this  policy  as  gross 
injustice,  savoring  of  Spanish  methods.  The  Supreme  Court,  however,  by  a 
series  of  decisions  —  usually  by  a  five-to-four  vote  —  upheld  the  authority  of 
Congress  to  rule  and  tax  these  dependencies  at  will,  since  they  "belong  to"  but 
are  not  "part  of"  the  United  States,  as  in  the  old  Louisiana  and  Florida  decisions. 


IMPERIALISM  619 

Some  radicals  believed  in  "expansion,"  and  others,  fearing 
"imperialism,"  feared  free  silver  more.  Hanna,  again  the 
Republican  manager,  made  skillful  use  of  returned  pros 
perity  under  Republican  rule,  appealing  to  workingmen 
with  the  campaign  emblem  of  "the  full  dinner-pail."  Mr. 
McKinley  was  reflected,  with  Theodore  Roosevelt  as  Vice 
President. 

"Free  Silver"  passed  out  of  politics  after  this  campaign. 
In  1890  gold  was  discovered  in  Alaska,  and  soon  that  wild 
country  was  pouring  a  yellow  flood  into  the  mints  The  passing 
of  the  world  —  as  new  mines  in  South  Africa  had  of  old 
begun  to  do  a  little  earlier  still.     Between   1898  issues 
and   1904,  three  quarters  of  a  billion  of  gold  money   was 
coined  in   the  United   States.     The  debtor  class  could  no 
longer  claim  that  the  value  of  gold  was  appreciating. 

"  Imperialism,"  too,  soon  ceased  to  be  a  burning  question. 
At  first  the  Philippines  were  ruled  by  a  Governor-general 
and  a  Commission.  These  American  officials  gradually 
introduced  a  limited  local  self-government  for  the  more 
civilized  districts,  and  in  1907  a  small  electorate  of  natives 
were  permitted  by  Congress  to  elect  a  lower  House  of  a 
Philippine  Assembly  with  slight  legislative  power.  In  1913 
President  Wilson  greatly  extended  the  appointment  of  na 
tives  to  responsible  positions ;  and  the  Philippine  Govern 
ment  bill  of  1916  placed  the  islands  very  nearly  in  the 
position  of  a  "Territory."  The  Governor  and  Vice- 
Governor  are  still  Americans ;  all  other  officials  may  be 
Filipinos ;  the  electorate  was  extended  some  fourfold ; 
the  upper  House  of  the  Assembly  was  made  elective  like 
the  lower ;  and  the  Assembly  was  given  control  of  all 
internal  legislation,  subject  to  veto  by  the  President  of  the 
United  States.  The  absurd  tariff  discriminations  (note 
above)  have  been  practically  removed.  A  large  party  of 
the  most  capable  and  honorable  natives  are  increasingly 
desirous  of  complete  independence,  but  they  feel  it  merely 
a  matter  of  time  until  their  end  will  be  conceded  them  by 
better  informed  American  opinion. 


620  AMERICA  AND  CHINA 

The  first  fruit  of  the  new  place  of  America  as  a  World 
Power  was  the  preservation  of  China.  England  had  long 
America  held  certain  ports  in  that  country,  and  within 
thed'^open:  a  ^ew  ^ears  Germany,  France,  and  Russia  had 
door "  begun  rapidly  to  seize  province  after  province, 

policy  in  1899  McKinley's  Secretary  of  State,  John 

Hay,  sent  a  note  to  all  powers  interested  in  China  urging 
them  to  agree  that  no  power  should  shut  out  the  citizens 
of  other  countries  from  its  "sphere  of  influence"  there. 
This  "open  door"  policy,  though  disliked  by  Russia  and 
Germany,  already  had  the  support  of  England,  and  it 
was  favored,  of  course,  by  the  small  commercial  coun 
tries.  The  forceful  statement  of  the  American  position 
just  at  that  time  had  much  to  do  with  preventing  the 
threatened  dismemberment  of  China.  After  the  Boxer 
Rising,  some  of  the  large  European  powers  seemed  again 
about  to  take  up  their  old  policy  of  seizing  "territorial  in 
demnities."  A  strong  protest  from  Secretary  Hay  induced 
them,  however,  to  accept  money  indemnities  instead.  The 
indemnity  paid  by  China  to  the  United  States,  it  should  be 
noted,  proved  much  too  large ;  and,  after  all  just  claimants 
had  been  paid,  the  balance  was  honorably  returned. 

In  this  matter  of  the  "Open  Door,"  the  immediate  in 
centive  of  American  policy  was  the  wish  to  prevent  the 
exclusion  of  American  trade  from  rich  Oriental  provinces ; 
but  that  policy  fell  in  happily  with  the  interests  of  civiliza 
tion  and  humanity.  The  main  opposition  to  the  American 
policy  —  in  ways  both  secret  and  open  —  came  from  Kaiser 
Wilhelm  of  Germany.  In  a  moment  of  justifiable  irritation 
at  the  German  government's  methods,  Hay  exclaimed,  "  I 
had  almost  rather  be  the  dupe  of  China  than  the  chum  of  the 
Kaiser." 

While  Hay  was  still  engaged  in  this  correspondence  with 
European  powers  regarding  China,  an  anarchist  murdered 
Roosevelt  William  McKinley,  and  that  suave,  gentle,  cau- 
resident  tious  President  was  succeeded  by  the  impetuous, 
aggressive,  positive  Roosevelt.  Hay  remained  Secretary  of 
State.  In  1904,  at  the  opening  of  the  war  in  the  Orient 


THEODORE  ROOSEVELT  621 

between  Russia  and  Japan,  Hay  obtained  pledges  from  both 
countries  to  respect  the  neutrality  of  China,  and  the  next 
year  Roosevelt  intervened  actively  to  bring  about  peace. 

The  accession  of  Roosevelt,  it  was  soon  plain,  had  brought 
a  new  force  into  American  relations  with  foreign  powers, 
but  the  main  foreign  problems  of  his  administra-  R00sevelt 
tion  had  to  do  with  Central  America.  The  Latin  and 
states  of  America  still  need  capital  for  their  Germany 
development,  and  sometimes  they  invite  it  by  granting 
foreigners  valuable  franchises  and  "concessions."  Some 
times,  too,  a  corrupt  government  sells  such  "concessions" 
for  far  less  than  their  value  —  to  fill  its  private  pockets. 
All  such  grants,  corrupt  or  legitimate,  are  apt  to  be 
resented  by  the  native  population,  and  are  sometimes 
revoked  by  succeeding  governments.  In  this,  and  in 
many  other  ways,  foreigners  acquire  claims  against  these 
countries  which  the  states  are  unwilling  or  unable  to 
pay.  The  United  States  has  long  taken  the  ground  that 
the  use  of  national  force  to  recover  such  claims  for  a  private 
citizen  is  improper.  England  has  usually  adhered  to  the 
like  policy.  But  other  powerful  nations  have  commonly 
shown  a  readiness  to  collect  such  private  debts  for  their 
citizens  by  force  or  threats  of  force.  In  1902  ten  European 
countries  had  claims,  aggregating  some  $38,000,000,  against 
Venezuela.  Castro,  President  of  the  Republic,  defied 
the  claimants.  Finally  Germany  and  England  began  a 
blockade  of  Venezuelan  ports.  It  soon  became  plain  that 
Germany  aimed  at  permanent  occupation,  and  England 
withdrew  her  vessels.  Then  Roosevelt  proposed  arbitration 
to  the  Kaiser,  and,  when  the  suggestion  was  ignored,  he 
abruptly  forced  the  withdrawal  of  the  German  fleet  by  the 
threat  of  instant  war.1  The  subsequent  arbitration  re 
vealed  gross  padding  and  unreasonableness  in  the  European 
claims ;  and  the  commission  cut  the  amounts  down  to  less 

1  This  fact  was  not  made  public  until  after  the  opening  of  the  World  War. 
At  the  time,  Roosevelt  permitted  the  Kaiser  to  share  in  the  credit  for  arranging 
arbitration. 


622  AMERICA  A  WORLD  POWER 

than  eight  millions.  Then,  under  pressure  from  this  country, 
Venezuela  made  provision  to  pay  this  amount. 

This  last  event  has  been  said  to  create  a  "New  Monroe 

Doctrine."     Europeans  had  long  expressed  the  opinion  that 

if  the   Monroe  Doctrine  made  us  the  protector 

United  „  .  ,  .  .   .  .     •  , 

states'  or  semi-anarchic  communities  against  just  claims, 
responsi-  then  we  must  ourselves  see  that  such  debts  were 
Spanish-  paid.  Roosevelt  seemed  to  assent  to  this  doc- 
trme-  He  took  the  ground,  in  this  dispute,  that 
if  "chronic  wrong-doing"  or  "impotence"  in 
any  American  country  called  for  intervention,  then  it 
would  become  necessary  for  the  United  States  to  "exercise 
an  international  police  power."  In  1904  he  went  even 
further,  when  he  stepped  in  to  obviate  European  inter 
vention  in  bankrupt  San  Domingo,  by  virtually  making 
the  United  States  the  "receiver"  for  that  country  in  behalf 
of  its  creditors,  —  a  course  that  has  ever  since  entailed 
troublesome  relations  with  that  island,  culminating  in 
despotic  military  rule  by  United  States  naval  officers  and 
marines  for  many  years,  with  much  bloody  slaughter  as 
recently  as  1920.  This  policy  has  been  severely  criticized 
also  on  the  ground  that  it  encourages  foreign  capitalists  to 
engage  in  the  wildest  financial  schemes  in  South  America, 
guaranteeing  them  their  claim  through  United  States  in 
tervention. 

More  important  still  was  the  movement  for  the  Panama 
Canal.  In  1881  a  French  Panama  Canal  Company  began 
The  Panama  work  at  the  Isthmus,  but  eight  years  later  the 
Canal  project  came  to  an  ignoble  end  in  financial  scandal, 

with  little  to  show  for  the  $260,000,000  expenditure.  Secre 
tary  Elaine  was  then  desirous  of  making  the  Canal  the  concern 
of  the  United  States  government ;  but  the  Clayton-Bulwer 
treaty  prevented.  The  Spanish  War  brought  the  matter 
forcibly  to  public  attention  again,  —  especially  when  the 
battleship  Oregon,  much  needed  to  reinforce  the  American 
Atlantic  squadron,  had  to  circle  the  Horn  to  get  to  Cuban 
waters.  The  American  people  began  to  demand  an  inter- 
oceanic  canal  under  American  control ;  and  the  extremely 


PEACE  MOVEMENTS 


623 


cordial  attitude  of  England  during  the  struggle  made  it  easy 
now  to  secure  from  her  a  waiver  of  her  rights  under  the  ancient 
treaty.  Then  in  1902  the  United  States  bought  up  the  rights 
of  the  Panama  Company.  The  government  was  unwilling, 
however,  to  undertake  so  vast  a  work  unless  it  could  secure 
sovereignty  over  a  considerable  strip  of  territory,  so  as 
to  police  the  route  effectively.  Colombia  refused  the  treaty 
urged  upon  it  by  President  Roosevelt.  The  American 
government  felt  that  it  was  being  held  up  for  unreasonable 


PANAMA  CANAL:    at  the  Ninaflores  Locks,  looking  north,  showing  S.  S.  Santa 
Clara  in  lower  west  chamber,  ready  for  water  to  be  lowered  to  sea  level. 

booty.  Two  weeks  later  an  opportune  revolution  in  the 
little  republic  separated  Panama  from  Colombia.  American 
naval  forces  were  so  disposed  as  to  assist  the  revolution 
materially ;  and  ex-President  Roosevelt  has  acknowledged 
that  the  revolt  was  directly  manipulated  from  Washington. 
(Said  he  frankly  some  years  later,  "I  took  Panama.") 
The  new  Panama  Republic  immediately  made  the  necessary 
cession  to  the  United  States.1  Then  the  Canal  was  under- 

1  In   1918  President  Wilson's  administration  negotiated  a  treaty  to  satisfy 
Colombia,  by  the  payment  of  $25,000,000.     The  Senate  Committee  on  Foreign 


624  AMERICA  A  WORLD  POWER 

taken  as  a  National  project.  Astounding  problems  of 
labor,  sanitation,  supplies,  and  engineering  were  solved 
effectively,  and  in  1915  the  Canal  was  formally  opened. 

The  United  States  took  a  creditable  part  at  the  Hague 

Conference  in   1899   and  at   the  second  meeting  in   1907. 

During  the  years  1903-1905  thirty-three  separate 

The  Hague  t.  &    ,      _/  .  ^ 

Conference  treaties  between  various  European  powers  pro- 
and  arbitra-  vided  for  arbitration  of  international  differences 
by  the  Hague  Tribunal  or  some  other  standing 
commission.  In  all  this  the  United  States  had  no  part.  In 
1904  ten  such  treaties  negotiated  by  Secretary  Hay  with 
important  countries  were  submitted  to  our  Senate  for  rati 
fication,  with  the  strong  indorsement  of  President  Roosevelt. 
The  Senate,  influenced  by  general  factiousness  and  by  dislike 
of  the  strenuous  President,  rendered  the  treaties  useless  by 
unacceptable  amendments,  as  it  had  rejected  the  earlier  pro 
posal  of  like  character  between  England  and  the  United 
States  (page  612) .  Some  like  treaties  were  afterward  ratified, 
but  during  the  sessions  of  1911  and  1912,  the  Senate  showed 
marked  hostility  to  another  extension  of  the  principle  of 
arbitration  strongly  urged  by  President  Taft. 

All  these  treaties,  too,  left  loopholes  for  passion  and  war 
by  exempting  from  arbitration  questions  "affecting  the 
national  honor."  In  1913-1914,  Mr.  Bryan,  as  Secretary  of 
State  for  President  Wilson,  did  secure  the  ratification  of 
treaties  "further  to  promote  peace"  with  England  and 
France,  and  with  many  smaller  states,  providing  in  each 
case  that  the  two  parties  shall  submit  all  disputes  to  an 
impartial  tribunal  for  investigation  and  report,  with  a  year's 
interval  for  negotiation  and  reflection,  before  making  war. 
But  the  absence  of  Germany's  name  from  all  these  lists  of 
arbitration  treaties,  and  her  defeat  of  England's  proposals 
for  disarmament  at  the  Hague  Congresses  were  ominous  of 
peril.  In  the  absence  of  effective  provision  for  world  dis 
armament,  there  was  still  no  assurance  of  continued  peace. 

Affairs  reported  favorably  on  this  treaty,  but  it  has  not  been  approved  by  the 
Senate. 


CHAPTER  XLI 

THE  PEOPLE    VS.   PRIVILEGE 

The  fundamental  division  of  powers  in  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  is  between  voters  on  the  one  hand  and  property  owners  on  the  other. 
The  forces  of  democracy,  on  one  side,  divided  between  the  executive  and 
the  legislature,  are  set  over  against  the  forces  of  property  on  the  other  side, 
with  the  judiciary  as  arbiter  between  them.  —  ARTHUR  T.  HADLEY,  Presi 
dent  of  Yale,  in  The  Independent,  April  16,  1908. 

ABOUT  1890,  social  unrest  was  becoming  the  most  marked 
feature  of  American  life.     The   "business  age"   since  the 
Civil  War  had  seen  wealth  multiply  enormously ;  godal 
but  that  wealth  had  become  more  and  more  con-  unrest  and 
centrated  in  a  few  hands,  and  those  hands  more  sP.ec/al 
and  more  dominated  politics  and  the  daily  life  of 
every  citizen.     In  nearly  every  State  of  the  Union,  in  the 
late  sixties  and  the  seventies,  groups  of  keen,  forceful  men, 
more  farsighted  than   their   neighbors,  grasped  for  them 
selves  the  main  resources  and  opportunities,  —  mines,  for 
ests,  water  power,  lines  of  easy  rail  communication,  and 
so    on.      These    rising    capitalists    then    reached    out    for 
special  privileges.      To  obtain   these,  they  set   themselves 
deliberately    to    fill    legislatures,    courts,    and    governors' 
chairs   with   their   creatures,    and   to   entrench   themselves 
behind  laws  framed  for  their  advantage.     The  old  forms  of 
popular  government  were  untouched;    but  the  people  had 
let  real  mastery  in  city,  State,  and  Nation  slip  to  a  narrow 
plutocracy,  which  fed  fat  at  the  general  expense  and  made 
the  "representatives"  of  the  public  its  private  errand  boys. 

The  industrial  organization  had  come  to  produce  wealth 
with  gratifying  rapidity,  but  failed  to  distribute  it  well. 
Between  1860  and  1900  the  ratio  of  wealth  to  popula 
tion  (per  capita  wealth)  was  magnified  by  four,  but  the 

625 


626  THE  PEOPLE  VS.  PRIVILEGE 

average  workman  was  not  four  times  better  off.     Accord 
ing  to  careful  investigation  by  the  Bureau  of  Labor,  he  was 
only  a  fourth  better  off,  while  great  multitudes 

The  failure  „       XT.  e.,         ,  . 

in  distnbu-  were  vastly  worse  on.  Nine  tenths  the  vast  m- 
tion  of  crease  of  wealth  went  to  one  tenth  the  popula 
tion,  while  at  least  two  tenths  of  the  people  were 
reduced  to  a  stage  of  poverty  where  health  and  decency 
are  imperiled.  The  tenth  at  the  apex  of  the  social  pyra 
mid  contains  real  "captains  of  industry,"  but  it  contains 
also  pirates  and  parasites.  Service  to  society  has  less  to 
do  with  its  revenues  than  plunder  and  privilege  have. 
The  two  tenths  at  the  base  of  the  pyramid  contain  many 
men  whose  poverty  results  from  physical  or  mental  or 
moral  lack,  —  though  these  qualities  are  quite  as  often  a 
result  of  poverty  as  a  cause,  for  it  is  even  truer  now  than  in 
Solomon's  day  that  "the  destruction  of  the  poor  is  their 
poverty"  ;  but  the  base  contains  also  multitudes  of  willing, 
hard-working,  sober  men  and  women  who  deserve  a  chance, 
now  denied,  at  decent,  useful,  happy  lives.1  America  is 
rich,  but  too  many  Americans  are  horribly  poor.  And  this 
modern  poverty  is  harder  to  bear  than  that  of  colonial  times 
because  it  seems  less  necessary.  Then  there  was  little 
wealth  to  divide.  Now  the  poor  man  is  jostled  by  osten 
tatious  affluence  marked  by  wasteful  and  sometimes  vicious 
expenditure.  Moreover,  in  the  early  day,  when  no  man 
was  very  rich  anyway,  there  was  always  one  lever  within  reach 
to  help  lessen  the  inequalities,  —  namely,  free  land  at  every 
man's  door.  Since  1800  this  condition  has  been  increasingly 
remote,  —  appertaining  to  a  distant  frontier,  —  and  since 
1890  it  has  disappeared  from  American  life. 

Combination  in  the  management  of  industry  follows 
naturally  from  modern  facilities  like  the  railway  and  the 

1  During '1907-1 909  a  committee  of  the  New  York  Association  of  Charities  and 
Corrections  to  study  the  standard  of  living  in  New  York  City  investigated  many 
hundreds  of  families  in  different  strata  of  working  people.  These  studies  proved 
definitely  that  at  that  time  of  "prosperity,"  a  very  large  proportion  of  working 
men's  families  received  an  income  too  small  to  maintain  physical  efficiency  even 
with  the  best  of  management  —  though  medical  care  and  dentistry  were  secured 
through  free  dispensaries  and  though  no  allowance  was  made  for  savings. 


WATERED  STOCK  627 

telegraph.  It  makes  possible  the  use  of  costlier  machinery, 
utilizes  former  wastes  into  by-products,  and  saves  labor  of 
hand  and  brain.  This  ought  to  mean  a  cooperative  The 
saving  for  all :  in  actual  fact,  it  has  meant  too  Problem 
often  a  monopoly  privilege  of  plunder  for  a  few.  The  prob 
lem  of  the  age  is  to  secure  the  proper  gains  of  inevitable  and 
wholesome  combination  and  at  the  same  time  to  restore  to 
the  individual  his  industrial  and  political  liberty.  For  a 
generation  after  the  war  that  freed  the  slave,  moral  en 
thusiasm  had  small  place  in  politics.  Commercialism  held 
the  reins.  New  evils  grew  upon  the  life  of  the  people  with 
little  check,  so  long  as  they  threw  no  immediate  obstacles 
in  the  path  of  "prosperity's"  chariot  wheels.  But  about 
1890  a  new  tide  of  moral  earnestness  began  to  swell  in 
American  life,  comparable  only  with  that  which  marked 
the  days  of  Abraham  Lincoln.  Again  the  people  heard  the 
call  to  line  up  in  a  struggle  for  Social  Justice  against 
Vested  Wrong  and  Special  Privilege,  which,  like  the  Slave 
Power,  reaped  where  they  had  not  sown.  The  Nation 
awoke  shamed ;  but  it  awoke  in  the  dark,  enmeshed  in  a 
net  of  intangible  chains  —  not  least  powerful  among  which 
were  the  old  traditions  of  an  age  of  free  competition  which 
had  passed  away  from  all  but  the  imagination  —  and  it 
found  itself  for  a  time  curiously  unable  to  grapple  with  its 
enemy.  The  struggle  is  best  seen  in  the  story  of  the  rail 
roads,  of  the  trusts,  and  of  political  corruption. 

RAILROADS 

In  the  70 's,  railway   construction  had  outrun  the  real 
business  demand,  and  the  roads  were  driven  to  ferocious 
and  ruinous  competition.     In  '73  came  a  "panic,"  Over-capi- 
properly  known  as  a  "railroad  panic."     Railroad  taUzation 
presidents  explained  it  on  this  ground  of  over-investment ; 
but  another  cause,  at  least  as  important,  was  over-capitali 
zation.     The  operating  companies  really  were  poor ;  but  the 
men  who  had  built  the  roads,  and  "inside"  manipulators 
like  the  Goulds   and  Vanderbilts,  had   become   fabulously 


628  THE  PEOPLE   VS.  PRIVILEGE 

rich.  Often  they  had  put  in  practically  no  money,  — build 
ing  the  roads  from  National  or  State  grants,1  or  with  money 
borrowed  by  bond  sales,  secured  on  the  future  road.  Then 
they  had  sold  stock,  to  any  amount  which  they  could  per 
suade  a  credulous  public  to  buy,  pocketing  the  millions  of 
proceeds,  and  leaving  the  corporations  upon  which  they 
had  "unloaded"  to  extort  in  rates  from  the  people  the  in 
terest  not  only  on  the  legitimate  investment,  but  also  on 
this  "water." 

The   public-service   corporations,    such   as   railroads   and 

city    gas    companies,    have    peculiar    facilities    for    selling 

such  over-issues  of  stock  because  of  the  monopoly 

Watered  .     .,  <?  i  i  •    .  T 

stock  a  privilege  conterred  upon  them  by  society.  In- 
monoCoi°f  deed,  "watered  stock,"  upon  which  dividends  can 
really  be  paid,  represents  monopoly,  natural  or 
artificial.  Whenever  dividends  become  so  large  as  to 
incur  danger  from  popular  indignation  (say  12  per  cent), 
it  has  been  the  practice  of  public-service  corporations  to 
disguise  their  profits  by  issuing  more  stock  (each  holder 
receiving  perhaps  two  shares  for  one).  The  company  then 
claims  the  right  to  charge  enough  to  pay  a  "reasonable" 
dividend  of  at  least  6  per  cent  upon  this  "water,"  urging 
especially  the  rights  of  "widows  and  orphans"  who  have 
acquired  stock  by  innocent  purchase.  Such  dividends  rep 
resent  an  unreasonable  tax  upon  the  community,  including 
multitudes  of  other  widows  and  orphans,  who  are  forced 
to  pay  higher  prices  for  almost  all  commodities.  Until 

1  Before  1873,  more  than  150  millions  of  acres  had  been  granted  to  railroads 
out  of  the  public  domain  (about  as  much  as  passed  to  settlers  under  the  Home 
stead  Act  up  to  1900)  besides  lavish  "bounties"  paid  by  rival  towns  along  possible 
routes.  In  187'2  every  party  platform  demanded  that  such  grants  cease.  Presi 
dent  Cleveland's  first  Message  (1885)  dwelt  upon  the  shamelessness  with  which 
the  nation's  "princely  grants"  for  public  uses  had  been  "diverted  to  private  gains 
and  corrupt  uses,"  and  Congress  then  enforced  the  forfeiture  to  the  government 
of  many  million  acres,  for  non-fulfillment  of  contracts  by  the  companies.  The  worst 
offenders,  however,  could  no  longer  be  reached.  When  Mr.  C.  P.  Huntington  (one 
of  the  magnates  who  had  wrung  vast  fortunes  out  of  Pacific  railroad  manipulations) 
was  told  that  the  government  would  take  possession  of  his  road  if  he  failed  still  to 
keep  his  contracts,  he  answered  callously:  "Quite  welcome.  There  is  nothing 
left  but  two  streaks  of  rust." 


RAILWAY  CONSOLIDATION  AND  RATES  629 

quite  lately,  little  attempt  was  made  to  prevent  stock- 
watering,  and  public  control  is  not  yet  efficient.  In  gen 
eral,  when  the  "water"  has  once  been  marketed,  the  courts 
have  protected  the  corporations  in  their  claims  to  dividend- 
paying  rates. 

In  the  five  years  following  the  panic  of   '73,   half  the 
railway  mileage  in  the  country  was  sold  under  the  hammer 
or  passed  into  the  hands   of   "receivers."     This  Railway 
condition  gave  special  opportunity  for  strong  lines  consolida 
te  absorb  weak  ones,  and   explains   in  part  the  * 
rapid  consolidation  of  that  period  (page  584).      That  con 
solidation  put  an  end  to  the  worst  of  the  old  cut-throat 
competition  for  freight  business.     Still  further  to  prevent 
rate-wars,  the  roads  within  a  given  territory  (as  between 
Chicago  and  New  York)  adopted  the  plan,  about  1880,  of 
throwing  all  earnings  into  a  common  "pool,"  to  be  divided 
according  to  a  set  ratio.     This  device  restored  the  railroad 
to  its  natural  place  as  a  monopoly. 

True,  with  the  swelling  of  business,  freight  rates  continued 
to  fall 1  —  but  not  so  fast  as  did  the  cost  of  transportation, 
because  of  bigger  engines,  larger  train-loads,  and  Andrates 
longer  hauls.     The  public  did  not  get  its  share 
of  the  saving.     Railway  profits  rose  so  as  to  permit  high 
dividends   upon   the    watered    stock,    even    after    wasteful 
management.     In  fixing  rates  for  localities  where  one  road 
controlled  the  freight  business,   the  maxim   early  became 
"a//  the  traffic  will  bear.91        The  road,  existing  by  virtue  of 
a  franchise  from  the  people,  and  sometimes  built  Discrimi- 
by  other  gifts  from  the  people,  extorted  from  the  nation 
people  all  their  surplus  profits  above  what  it  seemed  ad 
visable  to  leave  them  in  order  to  induce  them  to  go  on 

1  In  1865  the  average  rate  for  one  ton  one  mile  was  about  2  cents.     By  1877, 
it  was  if  cents,  and  in  1900  only  f  of  a  cent.     But  in  spite  of  these  low  averages, 
many  localities  paid  much  higher  rates.     Moreover,  long  hauls,  as  in  carrying  Mon 
tana  cattle  to  Chicago,  or  Kansas  wheat  to  New  York,  cost  so  much  less  than  small 
local  business  that  the  roads  made  huge  profits  at  the  lowest  rates  —  while  even 
those  "low"  rates  confiscated  the  inland  farmer's  profits. 

2  In  1885  a  committee  of  the  United  States  Senate  asserted  that  railroad  rates 
generally  were  based,  not  on  cost  of  service,  but  on  "what  the  traffic  wrould  bear." 


630  THE  PEOPLE   VS.  PRIVILEGE 

producing  more  freight.  Roads  used  their  power,  too,  to 
destroy  one  city  and  build  up  another,  sometimes  perhaps 
to  give  a  chance  to  those  "on  the  inside"  for  profits  in  real 
estate.  Often  they  favored  large  cities  at  the  expense  of 
small  ones,  and  gave  lower  rates  to  large  shippers  than  to 
small  ones.  This  last  and  worst  abuse  was  secret,  and  the 
companies  were  sometimes  the  unwilling  victims  themselves. 
To  get  the  business  of  great  shippers,  they  felt  compelled 
to  submit  to  demands  for  secret  rates ;  and  sometimes  they 
even  favored  such  a  shipper  by  imposing  a  particularly  high 
rate  upon  a  competing  shipper.  At  one  time  the  growing 
Standard  Oil  Company  ordered  a  railway  to  "give  another 
twist  to  the  screw"  upon  a  rival  oil  company  which  it 
desired  to  put  out  of  business. 

For  long  the  intense  desire  for  railway  advantages  pre 
vented  attempts  at  public  regulation  of  these  abuses.  The 
region  northwest  of  Chicago  and  west  of  the  Mississippi  in 
the  sixties  and  seventies  was  peculiarly  the  creation  of  the 
railway.  While  these  communities  were  in  their  hopeful 
youth,  they  had  eagerly  offered  every  possible  inducement 
to  railway  promoters.  Later,  especially  in  periods  of  busi 
ness  depression,  they  began  to  feel  keenly  the  mastery  of 
the  railway  over  their  fortunes,  and  to  agitate  against  it. 
In  the  early  seventies,  over  the  Northwest  there  sprang  up 
The  organizations  of  farmers  calling  themselves  "Pa- 

Grangers  trons  of  Husbandry,"  l  or  Grangers,  to  do  away 
with  unfair  railway  discrimination  and  unduly  high  rates. 
They  held  the  railway  a  quasi-public  business,  subject  to 
public  regulation  through  legislation,  as  the  ferryboat  and 
inn  had  been  regarded  for  centuries  by  the  Common  Law ; 
and  under  their  impulse  several  States  fixed  freight  rates  by 
law.  In  1871  Illinois  took  the  wise  method  of  appointing 
a  State  Railway  Commission  to  fix  rates  and  prevent  dis 
criminations.  This  example  was  soon  followed  throughout 

1  Each  local  organization  was  a  "Grange."  It  was  a  farmers'  club;  the  men 
talked  politics  at  the  meetings,  while  the  women  got  a  picnic  supper  ready.  These 
"granges"  were  federated  in  State  organizations.  The  Grangers  were  the  first 
workingmen's  party  in  rural  districts.  The  most  complete  study  of  the  move 
ment  is  in  Solon  J.  Buck's  The  Agrarian  Crusade  (1920). 


THE  GRANGERS  631 

the  West  and  Southwest,  and  much  other  restrictive  legis 
lation  was  adopted. 

The  railways,  and  the  Eastern  bondholders  whose  money 
had  largely  built  them,  railed  at  all  such  legislation,  not 
merely   as   unwise  but   as   wicked   and   confiscatory.     The 
railway,  they  held,  was  a  private  business ;    and  legislatures 
had  no  more  right  to  fix  its  rates  than  to  fix  the  price  at 
which  a  store  should  sell  shoes.     In   1877,   however,  in  a 
famous  decision  (Munn  vs.  Illinois)  the  Supreme  Andtheir 
Court  declared  that  such  institutions  as  railways  bequest  to 
and  warehouses  existed  subject  to  the  power  of  the  Amenca 
body  politic  to  regulate  them  for  the  public  good.     American 
law  took   a   great   step  forward    in  this  decision.     And  it 
came  about  because  the  disorderly,  debtor,  relatively  igno 
rant  West,  under  the  pressure  of  its  needs,  had  seen  further 
than  the  cultured,  wealthy,  comfortable  East. 

Much  of  the  Granger  legislation  was  unreasonable.  The 
legislators  were  largely  untrained,  ignorant  men ;  and  they 
worked  in  the  dark  anyway  because  the  railways  refused  to 
make  public  any  information  about  the  business.  Some 
times,  too,  the  legislation  was  infused  with  a  bitter  desire 
for  retaliation.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Companies  fought 
the  most  proper  regulation  by  despicable  methods.  They 
bulldozed  timid  business  interests  by  ceasing  railway 
extension,  or  threatening  to  cease  it;  and  when  a  law  had 
been  enacted  they  commonly  kept  it  ineffective  by  getting 
repeated  delays  in  the  courts  from  judges  whom,  in  many 
cases,  they  had  influenced  by  political  support  or  by  free 
passes  and  other  disgraceful  favors.  Most  of  the  Granger 
laws  were  finally  repealed.  Railway  commissions,  how 
ever,  are  now  found  in  almost  every  State,  with  authority 
at  least  to  investigate  charges  and  give  publicity  to  facts 
about  the  railroad  business ;  and,  most  important  of  all, 
the  Granger  movement  did  bring  about  the  supremely 
important  advance  in  American  law  noted  above. 

Next  came  attempts  at  National  control.  From  the  first, 
one  argument  against  the  Granger  State  iaws  had  been  that 


632  THE  PEOPLE   VS.  PRIVILEGE 

only  Congress  had  the  right  to  regulate  interstate  commerce 
—  and  nearly  all  railway  business  came  under  this  head. 
The  inter  ^n  1886  tne  Supreme  Court  took  this  ground  in  a 
state  Com-  sweeping  decision,  declaring  that  a  State  could  not 
merce  Act  regulate  the  carriage  of  goods  billed  to  another 
State  even  for  that  part  of  the  journey  within  its  own 
borders.  This  put  an  end  to  effective  regulation  of  railroads 
by  the  States,  but  it  did  not  affect  the  previous  decision  that 
the  public  had  the  right  through  some  agency  to  control  these 
"common  carriers."  The  only  remaining  agency  was  Con 
gress.  So  far  that  body  had  refused  to  act ;  but  now  (1887) 
it  passed  the  Interstate  Commerce  Act,  forbidding  pooling, 
secret  rates,  and  all  kinds  of  discriminations,  and  creating 
a  Commission  to  investigate  complaints  and  punish  offenses. 
This  law  promised  a  better  day.  The  roads,  however, 
persistently  evaded  or  disobeyed  it,  and  its  main  intent  was 
And  the  soon  nullified  by  decisions  of  the  courts.  Congress 
Supreme  meant  to  make  the  Commission  the  final  authority 
as  to  facts,  leaving  to  the  Federal  courts  only  a 
power  to  review  the  decisions,  on  appeals,  as  to  their  rea 
sonableness,  the  facts  being  taken  as  the  Commission  had 
determined  them.  The  courts,  however,  decided  to  permit 
the  introduction  of  new  evidence  on  such  appeals.  This  meant 
a  new  trial  in  every  case,  and  destroyed  the  character  of 
the  Commission.  The  Commission  was  hampered,  too,  by 
other  decisions  of  the  courts  —  as  by  one  which  set  aside 
its  authority  to  compel  the  companies  to  produce  their 
books.  As  the  veteran  Justice  Harlan  declared  indignantly, 
in  a  dissenting  opinion,  the  Commission  was  "shorn  by 
judicial  interpretation  of  authority  to  do  anything  of  effective 
character"  In  1898  the  Commission  itself  formally  declared 
its  position  "intolerable." 

The  Hep-          ^n  Roosevelt's  administration  the  Hepburn  Act 
bum  Act,       (1906)  sought  to  revive  the  authority  of  the  Com 
mission,   empowering   it    even    to   fix    "just    and 
reasonable  rates,"  subject  to  review  by  the  Federal  courts.1 

1  In  1910  all  such  appeals  were  referred  to  a  new  Commerce  Court  created  espe 
cially  to  deal  with  them.     Radicals  looked  askance  at  this  new  court,   whose 


AND  THE  RAILWAY  633 

The  law  also  forbade  roads  to  grant  free  passes,  give 
"rebates"  (partial  repayments),  or  carry  their  own  produce. 

1.  Lavish  grants  of  passes,  good  for  a  year,  and  renewed 
each  New  Year's  day,  extending  sometimes  to  free  travel 
across  the  continent  and  back,  had  been  one  of  the  Free  passes 
most  common  means  of  indirect  bribery  of  legisla-  forbidden 
tors,    congressmen,   and   newspapers.     Sometimes   a   judge 
traveled  on  such  a  pass  to  the  court  where  he  tried  cases  in 
which  the  railroad  was  a  party.     Apart  from  the  corrupting 
influence  of  the  practice,  too,  the  public  had  of  course  to  pay 
for  the  passes  in  higher  rates.     Congressional  prohibition  of 
free  passes  was  preceded  by  similar  prohibition  in  many  of 
the  States ;  and  this  reform  is  now  firmly  established. 

2.  Rebates  had  long  been  one  of  the  chief  methods  of 
evading   the  Interstate  Commerce  law  against  discrimina 
tions.     Certain  favored  shippers,  no  longer  given  And 
better  rates   than  their   neighbors  directly,   were  rebates 
still  given  secret  rebates  in  coin,  or,  still  less  directly,  were 
allowed  to  falsify  their  billing  of  freight,  so  as  to  bring  it 
under  a  lower  legal  rate,  or  were  paid  unreasonable  allow 
ances  for  storing  or  handling  freight  themselves,  or  for  the 
rent  of  private  cars  furnished  by  the  customers.     The  re 
ceivers  of  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Road  in   1898  testified 
that  more  than  half  the  freight  of  the  country  was  still  car 
ried    on    discriminating    rates.     Says    Professor    Davis    R. 
Dewey   (National  Problems,   103)  :  "The   ingenuity   of  offi 
cials  in  breaking  the  spirit  of  the  law  knew  no  limit  and  is 
a   discouraging  commentary  on  the  dishonesty  which  had 
penetrated  to  the  heart  of  business  enterprise" ;  and  one  of 
the  great   railroad  presidents   mourned,  in  1907,  that  good 
faith  had  "departed  from  the  railroad  world."     When  com 
pany  and  shipper  agree  in  trying  to  deceive  the  authorities 
in  such  a  matter,  proof  is  exceedingly  difficult ;  and  it  is  too 

members  were  all  appointed  at  once  for  life  by  the  conservative  President  Taft. 
and  the  feeling  was  soon  justified.  The  Commerce  Court  hampered  and  harassed 
the  great  Interstate  Commerce  Commission,  and  in  1913  it  was  abolished.  (Cf. 
page  358.)  Shortly  before,  Justice  Archbold,  one  of  its  members,  had  been  removed 
for  graft,  by  impeachment.  Cf.  page  362  and  note. 


634  THE  PEOPLE   VS.  PRIVILEGE 

much  to  suppose  that  the  more  stringent  provisions  of  the 
Hepburn  Act  have  wholly  done  away  with  this  demoral 
izing  practice. 

3.  Certain  Pennsylvania  roads  owned  the  most  im 
portant  coal  mines  in  the  country,  and  paid  themselves 
Railways  what  they  pleased,  out  of  one  pocket  into  another, 
and  their  for  carrying  coal  to  market,  —  so  excusing  them 
selves  for  a  higher  price  to  the  consumer.  The 
last  prohibition  referred  to  above  attempted  to  stop  this 
practice.  So  far,  the  attempt  is  fruitless.  The  United 
States  Steel  Corporation  mines  iron  in  northern  Minnesota. 
In  deference  to  the  Hepburn  Act  the  Corporation  is  not 
also  a  railroad  corporation  ;  but  the  same  group  of  capitalists 
under  another  name  own  railroads  (on  the  "community  of 
interest"  method)  which  carry  the  ore  to  market  at  extrav 
agant  rates. 

In  1914  this  struggle  with  the  railroads  had  gone  on  for 
two  generations.  Much  time  was  lost  because,  for  long, 
Failure  many  people  hoped  that  rates  could  be  kept 
of "  regu-  down  if  only  free  competition  could  be  main 
tained  between  rival  roads.  But  when  pooling 
was  forbidden,  the  roads  sought  refuge  in  secret  "rate 
agreements"  among  themselves;  and  when  the  Supreme 
Court  in  1897  held  such  an  "agreement"  a  "conspiracy 
in  restraint  of  trade"  (and,  as  such,  forbidden  by  the 
Sherman  Anti-trust  Act  of  1890),  they  merely  consolidated 
ownership  more  rapidly  than  had  ever  before  been  dreamed 
possible  (page  584).  In  1904  the  Supreme  Court  made  a 
futile  effort  to  stop  this  movement  by  declaring  the  con 
solidation  of  parallel  lines  illegal  (Northern  Securities  case) 
under  the  same  Anti-trust  Act.  But,  once  more,  combina 
tion  to  avoid  competition  was  merely  driven  to  another  dis 
guise.  The  groups  of  capitalists  no  longer  consolidated  the 
inter-  stock  of  different  companies  into  one,  with  one 

locking          board  of    directors ;    but  they  exchanged   among 
themselves  the  stock  of  the  different  companies 
which  they  controlled,   and  memberships  in  the  different 


"BIG  BUSINESS"  635 

governing  boards,  and  so  maintained  a  community  of  own 
ership  and  management.  In  1913,  in  the  administration 
of  Woodrow  Wilson,  an  attempt  was  made  to  limit  by  law 
the  memberships  on  such  boards  to  be  held  by  any  one 
man,  but  no  satisfactory  result  has  yet  been  attained. 

Before  America  had  been  in  the  World  War  a  year  it  was 
plain  that  consolidation  of  management  had  not  gone  far 
enough  to  secure  efficient  service  for  the  public.  The  waste 
and  the  delays  due  to  lack  of  unity  in  transportation  became 
a  national  menace.  The  whole  country,  railway  corporations 
included,  breathed  more  freely  when  President  Wilson 
seized  control  for  the  Nation,  with  one  central  authority. 
Necessarily  the  old  managers  were  for  the  most  part  left  in 
office ;  and  many  charges  were  made  that  they  deliberately 
sought  to  make  the  experiment  unpopular  by  wasteful  and 
inefficient  service.  At  the  close  of  the  war,  the  roads  were 
turned  back  to  their  old  owners  —  under  the  Cummins-Esch 
bill  —  but  a  large  part  of  organized  labor  and  of  the  radical 
progressives  are  still  calling  for  public  ownership,  with  some 
device  for  sharing  control  between  the  government  and  the 
railway  workers  (the  "  Plumb  Plan  ") . 

"BIG  BUSINESS" 

The  struggle  with  the  railroads  awakened  society  to  the 
need  of  public  control  over  other  monopolies.  Ownership 
of  a  water  power  or  of  a  mine  is  a  natural  monopoly.  An 
other  slightly  different  sort  of  monopoly  is  represented  by 
certain  kinds  of  business,  like  city  lighting  or  city  water 
supply,  where  competition  is  either  altogether  impossible, 
or  where  at  least  it  would  be  excessively  silly  and  waste 
ful.  Sometimes,  in  such  cases,  the  public  grants  an  ex 
clusive  franchise  to  some  company,  and  so  creates  a  legal 
monopoly.  In  any  case,  these  forms  of  business  are  usu 
ally  classed  with  the  "natural  monopolies,"  since  they  are 
monopolistic  "in  the  nature  of  the  case."  They  derive 
their  existence,  however,  not  from  nature  alone  but  directly 
from  some  franchise  grant  by  society ;  and  so  they  are 


636  THE  PEOPLE   VS.  PRIVILEGE 

even  more  generally  looked  upon  as  suitable  for  control 
by  society. 

And  modern  "big  business"  creates  a  still  different  sort 
of  monopoly.  A  great  manufacturing  "trust"  calls  for 
An  artificial  so  much  capital  that  a  competitor  can  hardly 
monopoly  afford  to  try  to  build  factories  and  secure  ma 
chinery,  with  the  uncertainties  of  the  certain  commercial 
war  before  it.  If  the  attempt  is  made,  the  stronger  enter 
prise  kills  off  the  other,  if  necessary  by  selling  below  cost, 
—  recouping  itself  afterward  by  plundering  the  public  when 
it  again  has  the  market  to  itself.  This  kind  of  monopoly 
is  recent,  and  in  outer  form  it  resembles  the  competitive 
business  of  former  days.  Society  awakened  only  slowly  to 
the  need  of  regulating  it  effectively  for  the  common  good. 
Even  to-day  such  combinations  are  sheltered  from  public 
control,  and  sometimes  from  public  investigation,  by  the 
legal  principles  of  an  outgrown  age  of  individualism. 

The  first  famous  illustration  of  this  sort  of  monopoly  was 
the  Standard  Oil  Trust.  Crude  petroleum  ("rock  oil")  had 
The  been  used  for  many  years  as  a  liniment  known  as 

standard  "  Seneca  Oil, "  and  about  1860  it  began  to  be  used, 
in  a  refined  form,  for  illumination  in  place  of  the 
older  "whale  oil."  Companies  were  soon  formed  to  produce 
it  on  a  large  scale.  In  1865  the  Standard  Oil  Company 
was  organized  in  Cleveland  with  a  capital  of  only  $100,000. 
Under  the  skillful  management  of  John  D.  Rockefeller 
it  soon  began  to  absorb  the  other  like  companies  in  that 
city  —  which  was  already  the  center  of  the  industry  of 
refining  crude  petroleum.  Thus  it  grew  powerful  enough, 
and  its  management  was  unscrupulous  enough,  to  compel 
railway  companies  to  set  up  secret  discriminations  for  it, 
and  against  its  rivals,  until  it  absorbed  or  killed  off  most 
of  the  oil  companies  in  the  country.  In  1870  the  Stand^ 
ard  Oil  was  one  of  250  competing  companies,  and  its  out 
put  was  less  than  one  twentieth  the  whole :  in  1877  it 
controlled  nineteen  twentieths  the  output,  and  of  the  few  re 
maining  companies  the  leading  forty  were  "affiliated,"  and 
took  orders  from  it.  By  grossly  unfair  and  piratical 


THE  TRUSTS  637 

methods  it  had  made  broken  men  or  suicides  of  honest 
competitors.  A  powerful  lobby  long  prevented  legislative 
interference,  and  the  Standard  Oil  attorneys  were  generally 
successful  in  the  courts.  Meantime  its  capital  had  been 
increased  to  90  millions  —  on  which  it  paid  the  enormous 
dividend  of  20  millions  of  dollars. 

A  few  independent  companies,  however,  were  still  putting 
up  so  stiff  a  fight  that  a  closer  organization  seemed  needful  to 
insure  success  for  the  monopoly ;  and,  in  1882,  Rockefeller 
invented  the  "trust"  The  forty  affiliated  companies  turned 
over  their  property  to  one  board  of  nine  trustees,  each  stock 
holder  in  an  old  company  receiving  proper  certificates  of 
stock  in  the  new  organization.  This  board  of  trustees 
managed  the  whole  business.  The  arrangement  was.  secret 
and  exceedingly  informal  and  elastic.  The  trust  was  not 
incorporated.  The  trustees,  when  convenient,  could  easily 
deny  knowledge  of  the  doings  of  subordinate  companies, 
or  disavow  responsibility  for  them ;  and,  with  better 
reason,  the  companies  could  throw  responsibility  upon  the 
intangible  "trust." 

Other  industries  seized  at  once  upon  this  new  device  for 
consolidating  management  and  capital.  It  proved  eminently 
satisfactory  to  the  average  stockholder,  though,  in 

, ,  p  .  „  And  others 

the  process  ot  organization,  many  small  compa 
nies  were  squeezed  out  of  their  property ;  but  it  abolished 
competition,  which  had  always  been  regarded  as  the  sole 
safeguard  alike  of  the  consumer,  of  the  small  producer  of 
raw  material,  and  of  the  laborer.  The  Standard  Oil  Trust 
bought  from  the  owner  of  an  oil  well  at  its  own  price,  being 
practically  the  only  buyer.  So  the  Meat  Trust  bought 
from  the  cattle  raiser.  Then  the  trust  sold  its  finished 
product  at  its  own  rate,  —  which  was  sometimes  an  ad 
vance  upon  former  prices,  and  which  was  never  reduced 
enough  to  correspond  with  the  decreased  cost  of  production. 
The  profits  to  the  stockholders  steadily  mounted,  even 
when  prices  became  somewhat  lower;  and  the  "cost  of  liv 
ing"  was  made  unduly  high.  Sometimes,  as  with  tin  and 
steel  plate  of  some  sorts,  the  absence  of  competition,  to- 


638 


THE  PEOPLE   VS.  PRIVILEGE 


gether  with  the  prevalent  low  business  morality,  led  to 
scandalous  deterioration  in  the  goods  put  upon  the  market, 
and  so  robbed  the  consumer  doubly. 

Finally  people  took  alarm.  States  enacted  anti- trust 
legislation  (for  the  most  part,  futile)  ;  and,  in  1890,  Congress 
The  passed  the  Sherman  Anti-trust  Act,1  forbidding 

Sherman       "every    combination"    in    restraint    of    interstate 
Anti-Trust     commerce.     Again  the  Standard  Oil  led  the  way. 
With   cheap,    superficial    obedience,   it    dissolved 
into  twenty  companies ;   but  one  and   the    same   group    of 

capitalists  retained  the 
controlling  interest  in 
the  stock  of  each  com 
pany,  and  composed  the 
twenty  ' '  interlocking 
boards  of  directors. 
Other  trusts  followed 
this  method  of  main 
taining  "community  of 
interest  and  manage 
ment,"  as  the  railways 
were  to  do  later  (page 
634) ;  or  they  reorgan 
ized  openly  as  huge  cor 
porations.  The  term 
"trust"  was  abandoned 
as  a  technical  business 
term ;  but  it  remains  in  popular  use,  properly  enough,  to 
describe  either  of  these  forms  by  which  aggregated  capital 
monopolizes  an  industry. 

Indeed,  the  monopolistic  movement  had  only  begun.  In 
1890  there  were  a  score  of  "trusts"  in  the  United  States  with 
And  its  an  aggregate  capital  of  a  third  of  a  billion  dollars, 
failure  jn  jggg  there  were  about  150,  mostly  organized 

within  two  years,  with  a  total  capital  of  over  three  billions. 
In  1901,  in  the  Roosevelt  administration,  came  the  organ - 

1  So  called  from  Senator  John  Sherman  of  Ohio,  who,  however,  had  little  to 
do  with  drafting  the  law,  though  he  advocated  it  in  ardent  speeches. 


Copyright  by  Keystone  View  Co. 
LADLE  POURING  MOLTEN  METAL  INTO  PIG 
IKON  MACHINES,  PITTSBURG. 


"REGULATION"   FAILS  639 

ization  of  the  United  States  Steel  Corporation,  with  a  total 
capitalization  of  $1;400, 000,000,  of  which  —  according  to  a 
later  government  investigation  —  $400,000,000  was  water.1 
Between  1900  and  1904  it  is  generally  estimated  that  the 
number  of  trusts  was  multiplied  by  eight  or  nine,  and  that 
the  capitalization  rose  from  three  billions  to  over  thirty  bil 
lions.  Of  this  immense  sum,  a  huge  portion  was  in  seven 
companies,  and  these  had  manifold  and  intricate  ramifi 
cations  ;  so  that  three  or  four  men,  perhaps,  held  real 
control. 

Attempts  at  State  regulation  of  trusts  to  lessen  the  evils 
of  monopoly  have  taken  the  form  of  State  laws  which  permit 
incorporation  only  on  condition  (1)  that  there  Attempts 
shall  be  no  stock-watering,  (2)  that  publicity  of  at  state 
management  shall  be  secured,  and  (3)  that  offi-  re*ulation 
cials  may  be  held  strictly  to  account.  Such  legislation, 
though  characteristic  of  nearly  every  State,  was  long  ren 
dered  of  no  account  by  three  "trust-owned"  States, - 
New  Jersey,  Delaware,  and  West  Virginia.  These  three 
merely  opened  the  door  wider  than  before  to  incorpora 
tions  of  every  sort.  A  corporation  organized  in  any 
State  can  do  business  m  all,  and  can  be  deprived  of  ~its 
charter  only  by  the  home  State.  Accordingly,  by  1907, 
95  per  cent  of  the  American  trusts  had  found  refuge  in 
these  three  States.  In  1913  their  citadel  in  the  favorite  State 
of  New  Jersey  seemed  overthrown  by  the  resolute  democracy 
of  the  governor,  Woodrow  Wilson.  On  his  last  day  of 
office,  after  a  splendid  two-year  battle,  Governor  Wilson 
signed  seven  "anti-trust"  bills,  which,  it  was  boasted,  would 
make  New  Jersey  a  "trust-proof"  State.  Practically  all 
of  these,  however,  have  been  found  nugatory  in  practice, 
through  the  shrewdness  of  corporation  lawyers  and  the 
rulings  of  courts ;  and  the  opportunity  for  the  trusts  to 
pick  any  one  of  forty-eight  States  in  which  to  corrupt  a 
legislature  or  a  court  still  makes  it  almost  impossible  for 
other  States  to  control  them. 

1  An  ominous  fact  was  that  this  "trust"  held  title  to  more  than  four  fifth,8 
of  all  known  iron-ore  lands  in  the  Appalachian  and  Superior  districts. 


640  THE  PEOPLE   VS.  PRIVILEGE 

Some  States  early  attempted  to  curb  the  power  of  monopoly, 
and  to  take  back  for  the  public  at  least  a  small  part  of  its 
Trusts  find  unreasonable  profits,  by  taxing  great  corporations 
?n°ttcti0n  higher  than  ordinary  individuals  were  taxed. 
Fourteenth  This  line  of  operation  was  also  stopped  at  once 
amendment  (1882)  by  the  Supreme  Court,  under  the  author 
ity  of  the  Fourteenth  amendment,  which  forbade  a  State 
to  discriminate  among  persons.  In  the  c%w  of  rfaljfftmJR 
vs.  the  Southern  Pacific  Railroad  the  Court  held  that  a 
corporation  is  a  "person"  in  the  meaning  of  the  word  in 
this  amendment,  —  though  no  one  thought  of  such  a  thing 
when  the  amendment  was  being  ratified.  Accordingly  no 
taxation  can  be  applied  to  corporations,  even  to  specially 
favored  public-service  corporations,  other  than  to  other 
citizens. 

In  no  other  civilized  land  is  the  government  so  power 
less  to  deal  with  aggregated  wealth  as  this  decision  made  the 
States  of  the  Union.  The  Fourteenth  amendment  had  been 
robbed  of  its  intent  (to  protect  real  persons,  of  dark  skins) 
by  previous  decisions  of  the  Court  (page  564).  By  this  deci 
sion  it  was  converted  into  a  shield  to  protect  artificial  persons, 
in  the  shape  of  dangerous  monopolies,  from  needful  regu 
lation  by  the  people.  The  Southern  Pacific  case  is  to  be 
coupled  with  the  Dartmouth  College  case  (page  292)  as 
explaining  how  the  Constitution  has  been  made  a  shelter 
to  property  interests  against  public  control  far  beyond 
anything  contemplated  even  by  the  founders  of  the  Con 
stitution.  For  the  next  thirty  years  the  Southern  Pacific  was 
"king"  in  California  —  until  Hiram  Johnson's  victory  in 
1911  (page  665). 

Said  Senator  Sherman,  in  the  debate  on  the  Anti-trust 
Act,  in  1890:- 

"If  the  concentrated  powers  of  this  combination  [the  relatively 
small  trusts  of  1890]  are  entrusted  to  a  single  man,  it  is  kingly 
prerogative,  inconsistent  with  our  form  of  government.  .  .  .  // 
we  will  not  endure  a  king  as  a  political  power,  we  should  not  endure  a 
king  over  the  production,  transportation,  and  sale  of  any  of  the 


PUBLIC  SERVICE  CORPORATIONS  641 

necessities  of  life.  If  we  would  not  submit  to  an  emperor,  we  should 
not  submit  to  an  autocrat  of  trade  with  power  to  ...  fix  the  price 
of  any  commodity." 

But  the  most  serious  power  of  such  aggregated  capital  is 
exercised  in  indirect  ways.  It  can,  at  will,  withdraw  money 
from  circulation,  compel  banks,  therefore,  to  con-  The  rule  of 
tract  loans ;  force  factories,  accordingly,  even  aggregated 
those  not  in  any  way  owned  by  the  combination,  ^ 
to  shut  down  or  to  cut  down  output  and  discharge  work 
men  ;  and  so  bring  on  business  depression  and  starvation. 
There  seems  little  doubt  that  such  power  has  been  often 
used,  in  slight  degree  and  for  short  flurries,  to  influence  the 
stock  market  and  favor  gambling  enterprises  there ;  and 
many  thinkers  believe  that  it  has  been  used  more  than  once, 
to  cause  a  "panic"  in  order  to  intimidate  timid  reformers 
in  the  battle  for  civic  righteousness,  —  which  might  other 
wise  soon  interfere  with  the  money  trust's  ownership  of 
judges  and  congressmen.  The  same  tremendous  power, 
without  question,  aims  intelligently  at  the  control  of 
higher  educational  institutions  and  dominates  multitudes 
of  newspapers. 

PUBLIC  SERVICE  CORPORATIONS 

After  the  Civil  War,  the  growth  of  cities  and  of  new 
inventions  began   to   give   tremendous   importance  to  gas 
companies,  electric  lighting  companies,  water  com-  Pub]ic 
panics,  telephone  companies,  and  street  car  com-  service 
panics.     The  tendency  toward  municipal  corruption  corpora- 
was  frightfully  augmented  by  the  growth  of  these  new 
"public  service  corporations."     Each  had  to  get  the  right  to 
use  the  public  streets  for  tracks  or  pipes  or  wires,  in  order 
to  do  business.     In  the    early  decades  of    the  period,  the 
company  usually  tried  to  get  a    charter  giving  it  exclusive 
use  of  the  streets,  for  its  kind  of  business,  for  a  long  term 
of  years  or  in  perpetuity.     At  the  same  time  it  sought  to 
escape  any  real  public  control  over  its  rates  or  over  the  serv 
ice  it  should  render,  by  making  vague  the  charter  clauses 


642  THE  PEOPLE   VS.  PRIVILEGE 

bearing  on  such  matters,  or  by  inserting  "jokers"  to  de 
stroy  their  apparent  force. 

Shrewd  men  saw  that  such  grants  would  become  in 
creasingly  profitable  with  the  growth  of  city  population; 
And  and,  to  secure  them,  some  corporations  found  it 

municipal  profitable  to  buy  up  public  officials  on  a  large 
scale.  If  a  charter  was  decently  just  to  the  city, 
the  corporation  often  prevented  the  enforcement  of  the  best 
provisions  for  years  by  getting  its  own  tools  elected  to  legis 
latures  or  city  councils  or  judgeships,  and  by  having  other 
tools  appointed  to  the  inspectorships  which  were  supposed 
to  see  that  the  company's  service  was  as  good  as  called  for 
in  its  contract. 

These  forces  were  largely  responsible  for  an  increased 
body  of  political  "grafters"  in  the  governing  bodies  of  State 
and  city,  —  who  were  then  ready  to  extend  their  operations 
unblushingly  to  other  parts  of  the  public  business,  as  in  extort 
ing  bribes  from  business  men  who  wished  contracts  for 
furnishing  supplies  to  the  city  or  for  building  city  improve 
ments.  Public  graft  became  an  organized  business.  City 
pay  rolls  were  padded  with  names  of  men  who  rendered  no 
service,  sometimes  of  men  who  did  not  exist  but  whose 
salaries  were  drawn  to  fatten  the  income  of  some  "boss." 
Important  offices  were  turned  over  to  incompetents,  favored 
for  political  service.  The  corruption  of  American  city 
government  was  exceeded  only  by  its  inefficiency.1  Com 
monly,  too,  it  allied  itself  not  only  with  public,  but  also  with 
private  crime.  Police  departments  permitted  gamblers  and 
thieves  and  thugs  and  dissolute  women  to  ply  their  trades 
with  impunity,  so  long  as  they  did  not  become  too  notorious ; 
and  in  return  the  precinct  captains  collected  each  week 
regular  pay  envelopes  from  the  criminals,  —  the  greater 
part  of  which  went  ultimately  to  higher  officials,  —  chief 
of  police,  mayor,  or  political  boss. 

1  About  1890  Andrew  D.  White  visited  many  of  the  most  important  Euro 
pean  cities.  At  Constantinople,  he  wrote,  the  rotting  docks  and  general  evi 
dence  of  inefficiency  made  him  homesick:  nowhere  else  had  he  been  so  reminded 
of  American  cities  (!). 


MUNICIPAL  CORRUPTION  643 

The  first  case  of  city  corruption  to  catch  the  public  atten 
tion  was  the  infamous  Tweed  Ring,  which  robbed  New  York 
City  of  a  hundred  million  dollars  in  two  years  (1869-1870). 
This  ring  was  finally  broken  up,  and  "Boss"  Tweed  was 
sent  to  Sing-Sing,  largely  through  the  fearless  skill  of  Samuel 
J.  Tilden,  soon  after  the  Democratic  candidate  for  the 
presidency  (p.  571).  For  long  it  was  a  pet  delusion  of  "re 
spectable"  Republicans  that  the  New  York  scandal  was  an 
exceptional  case,  due  to  the  deplorable  fact  that  New  York 
was  controlled  by  a  Democratic  organization  (Tammany) ; 
but  later  it  developed  that  Tammany's  methods  were 
coarse  and  clumsy  compared  with  those  by  which  a  Repub 
lican  "ring"  had  looted  Philadelphia. 

Slowly  the  people  have  learned  that  corruption  has  no 
party.  The  biggest  "boss"  naturally  allies  himself  with 
whichever  party  is  usually  in  control  in  his  dis-  «Big 
trict ;  but  he  has  a  perfect  understanding  with  Business " 
corrupt  leaders  of  the  other  party,  upon  whom  he  blpar 
can  call  for  help  against  any  revolt  within  his  own  or 
ganization,  so  "playing  both  ends  against  the  middle." 
The  surest  weapon  at  the  service  of  these  sly  rogues  is  an 
appeal  to  the  voters  to  be  loyal  to  the  party,  —  so  dividing 
good  men  and  obscuring  real  issues  in  local  government. 
Nor  does  one  housecleaning  and  the  punishment  of  a  few 
rascals  end  the  matter.  Gains  are  too  great.  In  a  few 
years,  New  York  and  Philadelphia  were  again  dominated 
by  rings  quite  as  bad  as  the  first  ones.  With  an  occa 
sional  spasm  of  ineffectual  reform,  such  conditions  remained 
characteristic  of  practically  every  important  city  until  the 
rising  of  the  mighty  tide  of  reform  about  the  opening  of 
the  new  century ;  and  the  fight  for  clean  government  is  not 
yet  won.  » 

The  graduation  of  corrupted  scoundrels  from  city  and 
State  politics  into  National  politics  was  one  cause  of  the 
degradation  that  befell  the  latter.  But  National  politics 
had  also  its  own  troubles.  What  a  street  car  company  or  a 
gas  company  was  to  a  city  council  or  to  a  State  judiciary,  a 
railroad  or  a  Standard  Oil  Company  was  to  Congress  and  the 


644  THE  PEOPLE   VS.  PRIVILEGE 

Federal  bench.  Corporations  which  wish  to  keep  on  good 
terms  with  the  party  machinery  in  State  and  Nation  have 
been  the  main  sources  of  campaign  funds.  Usually  such  a 
corporation  has  kept  on  the  safe  side  by  contributing  to 
both  parties,  —  somewhat  more  liberally  to  the  one  in 
power,  from  which  favors  are  the  more  likely  to  come. 
The  immense  contributions  from  such  sources  have  been  a 
chief  means  of  political  corruption  in  campaigns.  Mean 
time,  the  people  have  to  pay  these  contributions  indirectly  in 
higher  prices,  —  since  the  amounts  are  charged  up  to  "oper 
ating  expenses"  by  the  corporations. 

The  law  of  1911  to  compel  publicity  by  the  National 
Committees  of  all  political  parties  as  to  the  source  of  all 
their  funds  is  helping  to  correct  this  evil.  In  1912  a 
congressional  investigation  proved  conclusively,  by  the 
sworn  testimony  of  the  heads  of  the  great  "trusts,"  that 
there  really  had  existed  a  close  alliance  between  certain 
privileged  interests  and  guiding  forces  in  the  government, 
such  as  the  general  public  had  only  dimly  suspected.  Mr. 
H.  O.  Havemeyer,  President  of  the  Sugar  Trust,  was  asked 
whether  his  Trust  made  political  contributions  in  the 
campaigns.  "Yes,"  he  said  frankly;  "we  always  do  that. 
In  New  York  [controlled  by  Democrats]  we  throw  [our  con 
tribution]  their  way.  In  Massachusetts,  where  the  Repub 
licans  are  dominant,  they  'have  the  call.'  Wherever  there 
is  a  dominant  party  .  .  .  that  is  the  party  that  gets  the 
contribution,  because  it  is  the  party  that  controls  local  matters" 
[election  of  congressmen,  governors,  State  judges,  etc.]. 

This  public  corruption  does  not  come  in  any  considerable 
degree  from  ordinary  competitive  business.  Public  corrup- 
Search  for  ^ion  comes  from  the  desire  to  secure  special 
"  the  man  privilege.  The  public  service  corporation  in  the 
higher  up  c^y  jg  ^j^  source  of  municipal  corruption  :  the 

ordinary  business  man,  who  pays  a  bribe  perhaps  to  secure 
a  city  contract,  is  rather  a  victim  than  a  first  cause.  So 
in  the  Nation,  the  railroads,  with  their  land  grants  or 
their  desire  to  evade  legal  control,  and,  later,  the  fattened 
trusts  which  wish  to  preserve  some  tariff  "protection,"  are 


MUNICIPAL  CORRUPTION  645 

the  source  of  National  corruption.  The  city  or  State 
"boss"  who  "delivers  the  goods"  to  these  privileged 
corporations  seems  at  first  sight  the  front  and  substance 
of  the  corruption ;  but,  in  real  fact,  he  is  merely  an  agent, 
permitted  to  pay  himself  in  loot,  but  set  in  motion  and 
protected  by  "the  man  higher  up,"  the  respectable  head 
of  great  business  interests.1  These  large  interests  draw 
after  them  smaller  business  men,  sometimes  by  brutal 
coercion,  but  more  commonly  by  merely  playing  artfully 
upon  the  phrase  that  any  attempt  at  reform  "hurts  busi 
ness."  Almost  every  genuine  reform  movement  in  America 
so  far  has  found  its  chief  foe,  after  a  brief  run,  in  this  des 
picable  phrase. 

1  Every  American  should  read  Judge  Ben   B.  Lindsey's  The  Beast  and  the  Jungle, 
—  the  best  and  most  dramatic  portrayal  in  literature  of  the  truth  stated  above. 


CHAPTER  XLII 

FORWARD-LOOKING   MOVEMENTS  BEFORE   1917 

THE  new  moral  earnestness  of  1890,  we  have  said,  wan 
dered  blindly  for  a  while.  But  about  1900,  men  began 
to  see  that  the  first  step  toward  industrial  freedom  was  to 
restore  self-government  to  the  people  and  to  enlarge  it  by 
the  enfranchisement  of  women  and  through  new  political 
machinery  —  the  referendum,  the  initiative,  the  recall,  the 
direct  nomination  of  all  elected  officials,  and  the  more  direct 
control  of  the  Federal  courts.  The  forward-looking  move 
ments  treated  in  this  chapter  have  all  placed  these  matters 
foremost  in  their  immediate  programs. 

THE   LABOR  MOVEMENT 

The  ten  years  preceding  the  Civil  War,  with  the  new 
conveniences  for  communication  and  combination,  saw  a 
Labor  few  trades  organize  on  a  national  scale  (instead 

or?-ani"  «       °f  f°r  localities   only)  ;    but   these   first  national 

zation  after,    «        .          „  i       j 

the  Civil  unions      were   confined    to    trades   whose  total 

War  membership  was  small.     The  sixties  witnessed  a 

remarkable  spread  of  the  movement.  The  Brotherhood 
of  Locomotive  Engineers  organized  in  1863,  the  cigar 
makers  in  '64,  the  brickmakers  in  '65,  railway  conductors  in 
'68,  railway  firemen  in  '69  —  all  strong  unions.  By  1870 
forty  trades  had  achieved  national  organization,  and  the 
movement  continued  until  all  skilled  trades  became  so 
organized.  Nearly  every  union  has  its  weekly  or  monthly 
organ,  The  Carpenter,  The  Fireman  s  Magazine,  and  so  on; 
and  in  every  large  town  the  Trades'  Assembly  has  a  labor 
paper  devoted  to  the  general  welfare  of  the  movement. 
And,  apart  from  industrial  matters,  these  organizations  have 
exerted  a  notable  influence  and  training.  Many  a  local 

646 


THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT  647 

"Assembly"  conducts  its  business  and  debates  with  a  promp 
titude  and  skill  that  would  be  highly  instructive  to  college 
faculty  or  State  legislature. 

But  organization  of  single  trades,  even  on  a  national 
scale,  was  not  enough.  In  1869  a  few  workingmen  in  Phila 
delphia  founded  The  Noble  Order  of  the  Knights  Knights  of 
of  Labor,  —  to  include  all  workers,  skilled  or  Labor 
unskilled,  —  with  the  motto,  "The  injury  of  one  is  the 
concern  of  all."  The  strike  year  of  '77  (page  648)  popu 
larized  the  movement ;  and  in  '78  it  held  its  first  National 
Assembly,  made  up  of  delegates  from  local  and  district 
assemblies.  For  years  this  Order  exercised  vast  influence 
for  good,  and  was  the  fount  of  much  wholesome  legislation 
in  State  and  Nation.  Especial  gratitude  is  due  it  for  its 
early  recognition  of  the  right  of  women  to  equal  pay  with 
men  for  equal  service,  and  for  its  hearty  welcome  to  world- 
peace  movements ;  but  it  joined  the  Populists  in  the  Free 
Silver  campaigns,  and  virtually  fell  with  the  failure  of  that 
movement. 

The  American  Federation  of  Labor  rose,  phcenixlike,  from 
the  ashes  of  the  Knights.  Its  units  are  the  national  unions 
of  single  trades;  it  does  not  recognize  unskilled  The  Amer. 
labor  in  its  organization.  It  counts  some  two  lean 
million  men,  besides  three  quarters  of  a  million  * 
more  organized  in  railway  unions  and  affiliated  with  it.  It 
has  encouraged  the  formation  of  Trades'  Assemblies  (the 
"Trades-union"  of  the  thirties)  in  all  large  places,  composed 
of  delegates  from  the  local  unions  and  standing  to  them 
somewhat  as  the  National  Federation  stands  to  the  national 
unions.  The  annual  convention  and  the  executive  council 
of  the  American  Federation  exercise  tremendous  influence 
over  the  separate  unions,  but  have  no  binding  power  over 
them,  —  except  authority  to  levy  assessments  to  sustain  a 
strike  approved  by  the  central  council.  Samuel  Gompers 
has  been  annually  reelected  president  for  some  twenty -eight 
years  (1920),  and  has  proven  himself  a  notable  leader, 
though  in  more  recent  years  a  large  and  growing  element 
regard  him  as  too  timid  and  too  conservative. 


648  THE  PEOPLE   VS.  PRIVILEGE 

As  with  the  earlier  organizations  of  the  thirties,  so  too 
the  modern  unions  at  once  asserted  hostility  between  labor 
The  labor  and  capital.  Said  the  brickmakers,  in  the  pre- 
war  amble  to  their  constitution,  in  '65  :  "  Capital  has 

assumed  the  right  to  own  and  control  labor  for  its  own  selfish 
ends."  The  first  violent  clash  came,  naturally,  in  the  rail 
way  world,  —  because  organization  on  both  sides  was  first 
complete  there.  The  railway  panic  of  '73  led  many  roads 
to  cut  wages.  The  powerful  organizations  of  "skilled" 
engineers  and  conductors  proved  able  to  ward  off  such  re 
ductions,  or  at  least  to  secure  fair  hearing,  in  most  cases,  by 
mere  threats  of  a  strike;  but  the  places  of  firemen  and 
switchmen  could  be  filled  more  easily,  and  on  these  classes 
fell  the  most  serious  reductions  of  pay.  In  '77  the  fourth 
cut  within  five  years  drove  these  employees  on  the  Balti 
more  and  Ohio  to  a  strike  —  which  spread  like  a  prairie 
blaze  to  many  other  roads. 

The  strikers  sought  to  prevent  the  running  of  freight 
trains.  Riot  and  bloodshed  were  widespread,  from  Balti 
more  to  San  Francisco.  Pittsburg  was  in  the  hands  of  a  mob 
for  days.  The  crowds  of  idle  and  desperate  men  in  the  cities 
and  the  thousands  of  "tramps"  in  the  country  (both  new 
features  in  American  life  with  the  '73  panic)  added  to  the 
violence  and  disorder.  Millions  on  millions  of  dollars  of 
railway  property  were  destroyed,  and  the  injury  to  private 
business  was  much  more  disastrous.  Violence  was  finally 
repressed,  and  peaceful  strikers  sometimes  intimidated,  by 
Federal  troops.  On  the  whole,  however,  the  strikers  won 
important  concessions. 

Of  the  many  tens  of  thousands  of  strikes  during  the  next 
forty  years  that  marked  the  war,  so  opened,  between  labor 
The  Pull-  and  capital,  only  two  may  be  noted  here,  though 
man  strike  many  others  were  of  national  interest.  In  1894 
the  employees  of  the  Pullman  Car  Company  struck 
to  avoid  reduction  of  wages.  The  American  Railway  Union, 
sympathizing  with  the  strikers,  demanded  that  the  quarrel 
be  submitted  to  arbitration.  The  Company  refused,  and 
the  Union  refused  to  handle  Pullman  cars  on  any  road. 


THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT  649 

Twenty-three  leading  roads  were  involved.  The  companies 
had  contracts,  in  most  cases  at  least,  making  them  liable 
for  damages  if  they  did  not  use  these  cars ;  and,  apart  from 
this  fact,  they  were  bitterly  resolved  to  crush  the  "sym 
pathetic  strike"  idea. 

The  disorders  extended  from  Cincinnati  to  San  Francisco ; 
but  Chicago  was  the  storm  center.  Hundreds  of  freight  cars 
were  looted  and  burned  by  the  city  mob,  which  found  its 
opportunity  for  plunder  in  the  situation ;  and  the  loss  and 
crime  were  charged  upon  the  strikers  by  many  respectable 
elements  of  society.  The  governor  of  Illinois  (Altgeld) 
sympathized  with  the  strike,  and  declared  that  the  railway 
companies  were  paralyzed,  not  by  strike  violence,  but  by  a 
legitimate  situation,  since  they  could  not  secure  men  to  run 
their  cars  without  Federal  assistance.  President  Cleve 
land,  however,  broke  the  strike  by  sending  Federal  troops 
to  Chicago  to  insure  the  running  of  trains  —  on  the  ground  of 
preventing  interference  with  the  United  States  mails,  and 
of  putting  down  "conspiracies"  which  interfered  with  inter 
state  commerce.  The  business  interests  of  the  country 
heartily  indorsed  the  President's  action,  but  that  action 
was  one  of  the  chief  reasons  why  the  more  radical  wing  of 
Democrats  was  driven  into  opposition  (page  607,  note). 

In  May,  1902,  the  coal  miners  of  Pennsylvania  struck 
for  an  increase  of  wages  and  the  recognition  of  their  union. 
The  strike  lasted  five  months  and  caused  a  general  The  Coal 
coal  famine.      John    Mitchell,    the    head    of    the  strike  of 
miners'  union,  by  his  admirable  handling  of  the  1 
situation,  won  recognition  as  one  of  the  ablest  men  America 
has  produced.      The   operators,   consisting    of   a   few   rail 
way  presidents  who  enjoyed  a  complete  monopoly  of  the 
anthracite  coal   trade,  lost  public  sympathy  by  an  insane 
"divine  right"  claim  from  Mr.  Baer,  one  of  the  presidents, 
that  the  public  ought  to  be  content  to  leave  the  matter  to 
"the  Christian  men  to  whom  God,  in  his  infinite  And 
wisdom,  has  given  the  control  of  the  property  inter-  Theodore 
ests   of   the   country:9     Finally   President    Roose-  Roosevelt 
velt  brought  operators  and  John  Mitchell  into  conference 


650  THE  PEOPLE   VS.  PRIVILEGE 

(October  3) .  Mitchell  offered  to  submit  his  case  to  a  board  of 
arbitrators  to  be  appointed  by  the  President,  and  promised 
that  the  miners  would  return  to  work  at  once,  without  wait 
ing  for  the  investigation,  if  such  a  course  should  be  agreed 
to ;  but  the  operators  refused  arbitration,  and  called  loudly  on 
the  President  for  troops.  Privately,  Roosevelt  determined 
instead  "to  send  in  the  United  States  army  to  take  posses 
sion  of  the  coal  fields"  for  the  nation,  if  necessary;  but, 
two  weeks  later,  he  succeeded  in  bringing  the  mine  owners 
to  time  through  J.  Pierpont  Morgan,  the  financial  backer 
of  the  coal  trust.  Then  the  owners  agreed  to  arbitration. 
Five  months  later  (March,  1903),  the  board  of  arbitrators 
made  its  report,  sustaining  the  demands  of  the  miners  in 
almost  every  point.  The  action  of  President  Roosevelt 
was  acclaimed  by  the  sympathizers  of  labor  everywhere  as 
a  happy  contrast  to  the  action  of  Cleveland  nine  years 
before  at  Chicago.  Incidentally  it  is  well  to  note  that  the 
mining  companies  simply  added  to  the  price  of  coal  much 
more  than  the  arbitration  had  cost  them. 

During  the  Pullman  strike  (July  2,  1894),  a  Federal 
District  Court  issued  a  "blanket  injunction,"  ordering 
Government  a^  members  of  the  American  Railway  Union  to 
by  in-  cease  interfering  with  the  business  of  the  twenty- 

three  roads  (page  649).  Eugene  V.  Debs,  presi 
dent  of  the  Union,  continued  to  manage  the  strike,  and, 
two  weeks  later,  was  arrested  for  contempt  of  court.  In 
vestigation  of  the  charge  did  not  take  place  for  several 
months  -  -  during  which  Debs  remained  in  jail  rather 
than  ask  for  bail  on  such  a  charge  —  and  then  he  was 
condemned  to  six  months'  imprisonment.  In  effect  Debs 
was  punished  by  a  year's  imprisonment  for  an  act  which  no 
legislature  or  jury  had  ever  declared  a  crime,  and  he  was  de 
prived  of  his  constitutional  privilege  of  a  jury  trial.  The 
principle  was  not  new;  but  this  sort  of  "court  government 
by  injunction"  came  into  new  prominence  by  this  incident.1 

1  Debs  was  already  under  charge  of  violating  the  laws  regulating  interstate 
commerce ;  but  on  a  trial  for  this  offense  he  would  have  had  a  jury.  The  action 


THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT  651 

Organized  labor  at  once  made  resistance  to  "government  by 
injunction"  one  of  its  cardinal  principles.  In  1912  an 
"anti-injunction  bill"  passed  the  lower  House  of  Congress, 
but  failed  in  the  Senate.  Such  a  bill  did  become  law  in  the 
administration  of  Woodrow  Wilson,  but  in  recent  months, 
in  the  period  of  reaction  since  the  war,  it  has  been  rendered 
void  by  court  interpretation. 

Society  must  awaken  not  only  to  the  wrongs  of  labor  but 
to  its  own  loss  in  all  "labor  war."  It  foots  the  bills  in  every 
strike.  What  the  employer  loses  is  quickly  made  Labor  war 
good  to  him  by  increased  prices  to  the  public,  and  the 
What  the  laborer  loses  is  added  largely  to  the  pul 
cost  of  prisons  and  asylums  paid  by  the  public.  Even 
while  the  strike  is  in  progress,  the  "innocent  bystander" 
often  suffers  as  bitterly  as  the  combatants  —  just  as  the 
burghers  of  a  medieval  city  often  found  their  daily  market 
ing  interrupted,  and  sometimes  had  heads  broken  or  houses 
burned,  in  the  private  wars  between  lawless  barons  in  their 
streets.  Society  must  continue  to  suffer  such  ills,  as  medi 
eval  society  did,  until  it  becomes  resolute  to  compel  justice 
on  both  sides.  (During  the  World  War,  the  Nation  did 
this  through  its  great  "War  Labor  Board,"  but  that  fine 
example  has  now  been  allowed  to  perish.) 

Public  sympathy  is  effectually  alienated  from  either  side 
that  is  known  to  use  violence.  The  unions  know  this ;  and, 
from  policy  and  principle,  they  commonly  do  their  strikes 
best  to  prevent  disorder.  When  the  more  desper-  and  vi(>lence 
ate  and  ill-controlled  strikers,  or  their  sympathizers,  do  use 
violence,  well-to-do  society  promptly  calls  for  troops  and 
declares  that  "now  the  time  for  considering  the  wrongs  of 
labor  has  gone :  it  remains  only  to  restore  order."  Certainly, 
order  must  be  maintained  :  but  the  fundamental  evil  in  the 
matter  lies  in  the  fact  that  for  the  people  who  use  this 

of  the  court  deprived  him  of  this  right,  and  removed  all  the  securities  of  the  ordinary 
law.  Says  Davis  R.  Dewey,  —  the  practice  tended  to  make  "the  courts  no 
longer  judicial,  but  a  part  of  the  executive  branch  of  the  government,"  and  even 
tually  to  make  "the  judiciary  either  tyrannical  or  contemptible"  (National  Prob 
lems,  296). 


652  THE  PEOPLE   VS.  PRIVILEGE 

argument  most  glibly,  "  the  time  for  considering  the  wrongs  of 
labor"  has  never  arrived.  The  unions  assert,  too,  that  some 
times  the  employers  hire  ruffians  to  destroy  their  own  prop 
erty  in  order  to  represent  such  destruction  as  the  work  of 
strikers  ;  and  that  armies  of  thugs  in  the  pay  of  the  employers 
as  private  policemen  often  intentionally  force  a  riot  by  "beat 
ing  up"  peaceable  strikers  and  by  grossly  insulting  women 
and  children.  It  is  proven  fact  that  some  of  the  largest 
industrial  corporations  maintain  an  extensive  spy  system 
among  their  employees  ;  and,  to  earn  their  pay,  the  wretched 
spies  foment  strikes  and  more  serious  plots. 

The  prospect  brightens  somewhat  when  we  turn  to  the 
gains  that  labor  has  won  through  peaceful  influence  upon 
legislation. 

1.    After  the  Civil  War,  the  eight-hour  day  l  took  the  place 

in  labor  agitation  which  the  ten-hour  day  had  held  thirty 

years  before,  and  in   1868  Congress  adopted  the 

labor:  the     principle   for  all  labor  employed  directly  by  the 

eight-hour     government.       Many    States    and    municipalities 

have  followed  this  example  for  public  works;  and 

in   1912   Congress  enacted  that  the  principle  should  apply 

to   all  work   done   for   the   government   by  contractors  as 

well  as  to  work  done  directly  by  its  own  employees.     Various 

skilled  unions,  too,  have  secured  the  eight-hour  day  by  custom. 

State  legislation  regarding  the  labor  day,  except  on  public 
work,  had  always  been  nullified  by  the  courts,  until  within  a 
few  years,  on  the  ground  that  such  legislation  interferes 
with  "freedom 'of  contract."  In  1895  in  Illinois,  and  in  1911 
in  New  York,  laws  to  shorten  the  working  day  even  for  women 
were  thrown  out  by  the  courts  on  that  same  ground.  Re 
ferring  to  this  New  York  decision,  in  a  speech  in  New  York 
in  November,  1911,  Theodore  Roosevelt  said :  - 

1  "We  mean  to  make  things  over;   we're  tired  of  toil  for  nought 
But  bare  enough  to  live  on :   never  an  hour  for  thought. 
We  want  to  feel  the  sunshine ;   we  want  to  smell  the  flowers ; 
We're  sure  that  God  has  willed  it,  and  we  mean  to  have  eight  hours. 
We're  summoning  our  forces  from  shipyard,  shop,  and  mill : 
Eight  hours  for  work,  eight  hours  for  rest,  eight  hours  for  what  we  will ! " 

—  J.  G.  BLANCHARD. 


THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT  653 

"I  am  asking  you  to  declare  unequivocally  that  it  is  for  the 
people  themselves  to  say  whether  or  not  this  policy  [a  shorter 
labor  day]  shall  be  adopted,  and  that  no  body  of  officials,  no  matter 
how  well  meaning,  nor  personally  honest,  no  matter  whether  they 
be  legislators,  judges,  or  executives,  have  any  right  to  say  that  we, 
the  people,  shall  not  make  laws  to  protect  women  and  children,  to 
protect  men  in  hazardous  industry,  to  protect  men,  women,  and 
children  from  working  under  unhealthy  conditions  or  for  manifestly 
excessive  hours,  and  to  prevent  the  conditions  of  life  in  tenement 
houses  from  becoming  intolerable.  ...  I  do  believe  that  this 
people  must  ultimately  control  its  own  destinies,  and  cannot 
surrender  the  right  of  ultimate  control  to  a  judge  any  more  than 
to  a  legislator  or  an  executive." 

And  under  the  compulsion  of  public  opinion,  the  courts 
in  these  same  States  soon  reversed  their  earlier  decisions, 
finding  sanction  for  so  doing  in  the  "police  powers  of  the 
State,"  -to  maintain  a  reasonable  standard  of  health  and 
public  welfare.  Then  in  1917,  the  Federal  Supreme  Court, 
democratized  in  part  by  Woodrow  Wilson's  appointments, 
declared  constitutional  (1)  a  California  law  fixing  eight  hours 
as  the  maximum  working  day  for  women ;  (2)  an  Oregon 
law  fixing  a  ten-hour  maximum  day  for  men;  and  (3)  an 
Oregon  law  establishing  the  principle  of  a  "minimum  wage" 
for  woman,  a  "living  wage"  such  as  to  insure  health  and 
decency.1 

2.    It  has  been  easier  to  secure  limitation  of  the  working  day 
for  children  than  for  adults,  because  public  sympathy  was 
more  easily  aroused  and  because  the  common  law 
did  not  "protect"  children  by  the  "freedom  of  con 
tract"  rule.     In  1874  and  1879  Massachusetts,  through  the 
influence  of  organized  labor  and  of  the  Labor  Bureau's  statis 
tics,  made  the  first  efficient  provision  in  America  for  limitation 
of  hours  of  labor  for  women  and  children  (ten  hours  a  day) , 
with  adequate  inspection  to  enforce  the  law.     During  the 

1  This  last  decision  —  long  the  hope  of  radical  reformers  —  was  determined 
largely  by  the  conclusive  arguments  prepared  by  Louis  Brandeis  shortly  before  his 
appointment  to  the  Supreme  Court.  Under  these  circumstances,  Justice  Brandeis, 
of  course,  did  not  sit  in  the  court  when  the  case  was  tried. 


654  THE  PEOPLE  VS.  PRIVILEGE 

next  decade,  this  example  was  followed,  for  children  at  least, 
in  most  of  the  manufacturing  States  of  that  day  ;  and  there 
has  been  further  legislation  prohibiting  all  employment  of 
children  of  school  age  —  at  least  until  a  certain  proficiency 
in  studies  had  been  attained. 

Between  1880  and  1890  the  number  of  children  in  manu 
facturing  establishments  fell  off  a  third ;  but  after  1890,  the 
in  the  numbers  increased  once  more,  with  the  growth  of 

South  factories  in  the  South  —  where  proper  regulation 

of  this  crime  against  youth  remained  sadly  lacking.  Labor 
organizations  at  once  expressed  desire  to  coerce  these  negli 
gent  States  by  Federal  law  forbidding  railways  to  transport 
goods  produced  by  child  labor.  Authority  for  such  legisla 
tion  was  claimed  under  the  power  of  Congress  to  regulate 
commerce ;  but  when  such  an  act  was  at  last  passed,  in 
1916,  it  was  promptly  declared  void  by  the  Supreme  Court. 
The  same  end,  however,  was  reached  in  1918  by  a  child- 
labor  amendment  to  a  federal  tax  law,  but  there  is  still  great 
need  of  State  legislation  in  the  South. 

3.  A  scientific  investigation  of  labor  conditions  by  State 
and  Federal  governments,  together  with  publicity   of  the 
Labor  findings,  has  been   one  of   the  wisest  demands  of 
Bureaus        labor.     In  1869  a  Labor  Reform  party  secured  a 
State  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics  in  Massachusetts.     In  the 
eighties  the  Knights  of  Labor  secured  such  a  bureau  in  the 
Federal  government  and  in  many  States.     Most  of  the  States 
now  have  such  departments,  usually  headed  by  labor  repre 
sentatives   and   charged  with  authority  to  enforce  factory 
legislation.     By  1913  the  Federal  Bureau  had  grown  into 
the  Department  of  Labor.     In  1912,  too,   the  government 
created  the  Children  s  Bureau  to  promote  child  welfare. 

4.  Factory  acts  have  been  adopted  in  nearly  all  the  States, 
requiring  employers  to   "fence"   dangerous  machinery,  to 

arrange  for  escape  from  possible  fire,  and  to  pro- 
Factory  acts      .  ,  . .,    .  T  i      P        i  e 

vide    adequate     ventilation    and  •  ireedom    trom 

dampness  and  from    extreme  temperatures.     Such  legisla- 


THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT  655 

tion    is  enforced    through    inspection    by  the  State   Labor 
Bureaus. 

5.  Compensation  to  workmen  for  injuries  received  in  the 
course  of  their  toil  has  made  much  progress.  The  Common 
Law  permitted  an  employee  to  recover  by  a  suit  Workmen>s 
for  damages.  The  cost,  however,  was  too  great  Compensa- 
for  poor  men  in  any  but  the  gravest  cases ;  and  if  tlon  acts 
the  accident  was  caused  by  the  carelessness  of  a  "fellow 
servant,"  no  recovery  was  possible.  Happily,  many  of  the 
States,  by  employers'  liability  laws,  have  abolished  this  last 
principle,  and  some  of  them  have  made  compensation  al 
most  automatic  —  by  State  insurance,  without  the  interven 
tion  of  legal  processes  —  though  in  others  there  remains 
much  to  be  done  in  this  line.  A  model  law  has  been  adopted 
by  the  Federal  government  for  railroad  employees  engaged 
in  interstate  commerce  and  (1916)  for  all  Federal  employees. 

When  the  practice  becomes  general,  compensation  for  ac 
cidents  will  become  an  item  in  the  general  expense  account 
of  all  factories,  —  part  of  the  operating  expenses,  —  and 
will  be  paid,  as  it  should  be,  by  society,  in  the  price  of  the 
goods.  At  the  same  time,  each  employer  will  have  an 
inducement  to  precautions,  since,  by  reducing  accidents 
below  the  average,  he  will  add  to  his  profits. 

In  this  matter  America,  with  its  constitutional  protection 
to  property  interests,  still  lags  far  behind  several  European 
lands.  No  other  industrial  country  needs  such  legislation 
as  much  as  America.  No  other  one  has  so  large  a  proportion 
of  preventable  accidents.  In  our  coal  mines  alone,  in  1908, 
three  thousand  men  were  killed  and  ten  thousand  injured. 
The  family  wreckage  that  goes  with  such  loss  of  life  by  the 
breadwinners  is  even  more  appalling.  Unless  this  slaughter 
is  checked  by  law,  or  by  greater  sense  of  responsibility  in 
employers,  American  industry  threatens  to  become  more 
wasteful  of  human  life  and  social  welfare  than  ancient  war 
was. 

Closely  related  to  one  of  these  forward  steps  is  a  gain 
made  recently  under  threat  of  strike.  In  March  of  1916,  the 


656 


THE  PEOPLE   VS.  PRIVILEGE 


four  great  railway  " brotherhoods"  (conductors,  engineers, 
trainmen,  and  firemen)  began  an  earnest  agitation  for  "an 
The  ei  ht  eight-hour  day,  with  pay-and-a-half  for  over- 
hour  Tail-  time."  *  After  various  fruitless  conferences  with 
way  law  railroad  managers,  the  men  voted  (94  per  cent  of 
the  400,000  members  of  the  brotherhoods)  to 
give  their  "heads"  authority  to  call  a  nation-wide  strike  if 
the  managers  persisted.  The  nation  was  alarmed.  There 


Harris  and  Ewing,  Washington,  D.  C. 

WATCHING  THE  PROCESSION  OF  THE  AMERICAN  FEDERATION  OF  LABOR  at  its 
meeting  in  1916.  From  left  to  right  the  figures  are  President  Wilson,  Samuel 
Gompers,  and  Secretary  Wilson  of  the  Department  of  Labor. 

seemed  no  doubt  that  the  brotherhoods  could  tie  up  the 
transportation  of  the  country  completely ;  and  that  would 
mean  ruin  to  business  and  starvation  to  the  city  poor. 
The  managers  offered  to  arbitrate :  the  men  were  willing 

1  The  railroad  managers  insisted  that  this  really  meant  not  shorter  hours  but 
an  increase  of  $10,000,000  a  year  in  wages.  The  men  declared  they  were  after 
shorter  hours,  and  that  they  asked  extra  pay  for  overtime  mainly  to  compel  the 
roads  to  arrange  eight-hour  schedules. 


THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT  657 

to  arbitrate  as  to  pay  for  overtime,  but  not  as  to  the 
eight-hour  day.  President  Wilson  now  called  the  "heads" 
and  the  railway  managers  into  consultation ;  but  many 
days  of  conference  brought  no  result.  The  President  then 
made  a  public  statement  of  his  position:  "I  have  recom 
mended  the  concession  of  the  eight-hour  day  —  that  is, 
the  substitution  of  an  eight-hour  day  for  the  present  ten- 
hour  day  in  all  the  existing  practices  and  agreements.  I 
made  this  recommendation  because  I  believe  the  conces 
sion  right.  The  eight-hour  day  now  undoubtedly  has 
the  sanction  of  the  judgment  of  society  in  its  favor,  and 
should  be  adopted  as  a  basis  for  wages  even  where  the 
actual  work  to  be  done  cannot  be  completed  within  eight 
hours.  ..."  The  roads,  the  President  continued,  might 
or  might  not  be  entitled  to  increase  rates  to  the  public : 
only  time  could  show  what  adjustments  would  be  necessary. 
Accordingly,  he  recommended  that  the  men  postpone  their 
demand  regarding  increased  pay  for  overtime. 

The  men  accepted  the  President's  plan,  but  the  managers 
refused  it.  The  strike  was  set  for  an  hour  only  some  six 
days  off.  But  Congress,  under  the  President's  leadership, 
hastily  enacted  an  eight-hour  law  for  all  interstate  com 
merce.  The  whole  matter  was  a  leading  issue  at  the  elec 
tion  in  November,  when  the  President  was  given  a  second 
term ;  and  in  the  following  March  the  law  was  upheld  by 
the  Supreme  Court. 

The  "closed  shop"  has  been  a  chief  aim  of  labor  unions 
in  many  strikes  and  boycotts.     Labor  unionists  believe  that 
they  must  have  "collective    bargaining"  if  labor  The 
is  to  deal    with    capital  on    anything    like  equal  "closed 
terms :  the    individual    laborer  must    accept  any  £ 
terms  offered  him.     Accordingly,  members  of  a  union  con 
tend  that  every  worker  in  their  trade  must  be  persuaded,  or 
forced,  to  join  the  union  or  leave  the  industry.     The  man 
who  stays  out  gets  whatever  better  conditions  may  be  se 
cured   by  collective   bargaining,  without    giving    his    help 
toward  it;  and,  in  time  of  trial,  he  becomes  a  traitor  to 


658  THE  PEOPLE  VS.  PRIVILEGE 

the  cause  of  labor  by  underbidding  the  union  standard. 
On  the  other  hand,  many  liberal-minded  people  look  upon 
the  principle  of  the  closed  shop  as  "un-American."  It  is 
easily  designated  as  tyranny  toward  the  individual  laborer, 
who  is  no  longer  "permitted"  to  work  "on  his  own  terms." 
Sometimes,  too,  a  strike  against  a  fair  employer  who  himself 
recognizes  union  labor,  but  who  has  contracts  with  firms 
that  do  not,  involves  serious  injustice ;  and  the  courts  now 
declare  such  "  compound  "  strikes  illegal. 

The  unions  fall  often  into  the  hands  of  self-seeking  leaders, 
or  of  treacherous  ones,  and  are  used  to  bad  ends ;  and 
the  most  sincere  leaders  are  no  more  beyond  possibility 
of  error,  in  their  puzzling  duties,  than  other  men  are. 
But  the  sins  of  organized  labor,  while  often  more  violent, 
are  usually  less  dangerous  to  human  progress,  than  the  sins 
of  organized  capital,  which  commonly  provoke  them.  From 
labor's  viewpoint,  talk  by  a  "scab"  of  his  individual  "right" 
to  bargain  his  own  labor  is  as  muqh  out  of  place  as  like 
vaporings  by  a  deserter  in  war.  The  "unionist"  feels  that 
organized  labor  is  the  only  hope  for  better  conditions  of 
life  for  the  masses  of  mankind. 

Employers'  associations  often  charge  organized  labor 
bitterly  with  that  sort  of  sabotage  which  consists  in  limiting 
production  by  "loafing  on  the  job."  But  it  is  a  question 
whether  the  blame  does  not  rest  at  least  as  much  upon  the 
employers,  since  they  direct  the  system  of  industry.  Labor 
does  loaf.  It  has  lost  interest  in  "piling  up  profits  —  for 
the  bosses."  To  restore  interest,  to  supply  incentive, 
higher  wages  are  of  less  avail  than  a  new  movement  to  de 
mocratize  industry.  Wide-awake  employers  here  and  there 
are  finding  it  pay  to  admit  their  workmen  not  only  to  a 
share  .in  profits,  but  also,  through  elected  councils,  to  a 
share  in  the  management  and  to  a  partial  ownership  in  their 
jobs — so  that  they  and  their  families  may  not  at  a  moment's 
notice  be  plunged  into  misery  by  the  chance  whim  of  an 
employer  or  of  a  tyrannical  foreman.  Recently  the  Catholic 
Church  has  approved  such  a  program  for  industry,  and 
other  religious  organizations  have  gone  far  on  the  same  road. 


THE  FARMER  MOVEMENT  659 


THE  FARMER  AND  THE  NON-PARTISAN  LEAGUE 

In  recent  decades  the  farmer  has  made  great  progress  in 
increasing  production  —  in  making  two  blades  of  grass  grow 
where  one  grew  before,  to  the  world's  great  gain  —  but  very 
little  progress  in  marketing  his  produce  to  his  own  gain. 
True,  many  farmers  are  finally  able  to  "retire"  with  a  small 
competence  from  the  increase  in  value  of  their  land,  and  occa 
sionally  one  even  makes  money  from  his  crops,  either  through 
unusual  ability  or  luck.  But  many  investigations  show 
beyond  dispute  that,  in  spite  of  his  long  day  of  fourteen  or 
fifteen  hours  of  strenuous  toil  and  his  life  of  stern  privation 
and  denial,  the  average  farmer,  especially  in  the  Northwest, 
gets  less  return  for  his  labor  than  the  average  hired  farm 
hand  —  to  say  nothing  of  city  labor.  Farmers  are  learning 
that  they  have  been  selling  their  produce  for  less  than  the 
cost  of  production  —  if  they  figure  the  labor  of  themselves 
and  their  family  at  anything  like  the  price  of  town  labor. 
This  is  the  fundamental  reason  why,  in  spite  of  much  noisy 
"  back-to-the-f arm  "  propaganda,  the  drift  from  farm  to  city 
grows  steadily  toward  a  national  menace. 

About  1900  the  conviction  began  to  spread  in  the  grain- 
growing  states  that  the  farmer's  lack  of  profits  was  due  to 
unreasonable  profits  by  an  unreasonable  number  of  middle 
men,  and  more  specifically,  to  undue  control  by  millers  and 
by  grain  men  in  the  wheat  pits  of  the  great  markets  (1)  over 
manipulation  of  grain  grading  l  at  the  elevators,  (2)  over 
price-fixing  in  the  monopolistic  and  speculative  markets, 

1  The  Minneapolis  elevators  every  year  ship  out  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
bushels  of  high-grade  wheat  more  than  they  take  in,  and  the  same  number  of  bushels 
of  low-grade  wheat  less  than  they  take  in.  On  grain  originally  graded  low,  the 
farmer  gets  merely  a  trifle.  This  tremendous  change  of  market  value  is  brought 
about  partly  by  skillful  shuffling :  the  elevator  mixes  a  very  little  No.  1  with  a 
large  amount  of  No.  2  (No.  2  that  is  already  almost  No.  1),  and  so  can  pass  the  whole 
as  No.  1  without  materially  changing  the  food  value.  The  grain  men  will  say,  truly 
enough,  that  a  larger  part  of  the  change  is  due  to  the  fact  that  passing  grain  through 
the  elevator  makes  it  grade  higher  (gives  it  brighter  color  and  somewhat  better 
quality).  But  if  "no  grade"  wheat  is  so  cheaply  made  high  grade,  then  plainly 
the  farmer  is  robbed  by  the  very  great  difference  in  price  between  the  two  grades 
when  he  sells.  The  loss  in  a  grain  State  runs  up  into  millions  of  dollars  a  year. 


660  THE  PEOPLE  VS.  PRIVILEGE 

and  (3)  through  their  position  on  big  bank  directorates,  over 
the  credit  extended  to  or  withdrawn  from  farmers  by  the 
dependent  country  banks  —  a  control  susceptible  of  use  to 
compel  the  farmer  to  sell  his  grain  when  the  market  is  lowest. 
So  arose  demands  for  State-owned  elevators  and  flour  mills, 
State  banks  to  extend  rural  credits,  and  such  other  matters 
as  State  hail  insurance.  Finally,  when  business  interests 
had  long  shown  themselves  heedless  or  obdurate,  these  de 
mands  were  taken  up  by  a  new  farmers'  organization  in 
North  Dakota,  led  by  Arthur  C.  Townley. 

The  Non-Partisan  League  is  a  political  organization  with 
a  specific  program  for  reform,  but  it  is  not  a  political  party. 
As  the  name  implies,  it  means  to  use  the  machinery  of 
either  political  party  through  which  it  can  best  attain  its 
aims.  In  the  Northwest,  this  is  commonly  the  Republican 
party,  but  in  Montana,  where  the  Democrats  are  usually 
dominant,  the  League  has  sought  to  utilize  that  party. 
For  five  years  (1915-1920)  the  Non-Partisans  have  controlled 
North  Dakota  and  have  put  much  of  their  program  into 
effect.  Business  interests,  both  in  the  State  and  in  neigh 
boring  grain  centers  like  Minneapolis  and  Duluth,  have 
fought  them  fiercely,  and  have  attempted  to  discredit  their 
program  as  "Socialism"  and  as  unconstitutional.  But  in 
the  summer  of  1920  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States 
declared  constitutional  the  laws  most  in  dispute  —  for 
State  banks,  State  elevators,  and  State  flour  mills.  This 
decision  marks  another  milestone  in  the  growth  of  American 
law  and  establishes  the  right  of  the  State  to  go  into  business 
when  its  citizens  think  such  action  needful  for  their  well- 
being.  (Cf.  page  631.) 

SOCIALISTS  AND  SINGLE  TAKERS 

While  the  Labor  Union  was  appealing  to  skilled  workers, 
Socialism  made  rapid  converts  among  unskilled  laborers 
Growth  of  on  the  streets  and  among  students  in  the  closet, 
Socialism  until  it  became  a  force  to  be  reckoned  with  in 
American  life. 


GROWTH  OF  SOCIALISM  661 

Modern  Socialism  points  out  that  a  few  capitalists  prac 
tically  control  the  means  of  producing  wealth  ("the  ma 
chinery  of  production  and  transportation").  This,  they 
argue,  is  the  essential  evil  in  industrial  conditions.  Their 
remedy  is  to  have  society  step  into  the  place  of  those  few,  taking 
over  the  ownership  and  management  (1)  of  land,  wherever 
practicable,  including  especially  mines,  water  power,  and 
other  natural  resources,  (2)  of  transportation  and  com 
munication,  and  (3)  of  all  large-scale  production.  Private 
ownership  for  private  enjoyment  and  consumption,  they  claim, 
would  then  regulate  itself  without  injury  to  the  common  life. 

A  radical  faction  of  Socialists,  losing  faith  in  political 
methods,  has  split  off  into  a  distinct  organization  in  favor  of 
"direct  action."  By  this  they  do  not  mean,  most  The  x  w  w 
of  them,  the  use  of  bombs  and  bullets  in  place  of 
ballots,  but  they  do  mean  the  compulsion  of  society  by  in 
dustrial  pressure  —  as  finally  by  "general  strikes."  As  a 
means  to  success,  they  work  first  for  the  organization  of 
great  masses  of  labor,  unskilled  as  well  as  skilled,  into 
"one  big  union."  This  program,  first  put  forward  by  the 
French  "Syndicalists,"  has  been  adopted  in  America  by 
the  "Industrial  Workers  of  the  World"  ("I.W.W. ").  "Poor 
work  for  poor  pay,"  an  early  slogan,  passed  with  these  ad 
vocates  of  industrial  war  quickly  into  more  serious  forms 
of  sabotage,  such  as  ruining  machinery  and  spoiling  raw 
material.  Society,  in  turn,  alarmed  and  angered,  instead 
of  punishing  merely  for  such  crimes  when  committed,  has 
many  times  allowed  these  agitators  to  claim  the  cloak  of 
martyrs,  by  refusing  them  the  ordinary  privileges  of  free 
speech.  Certainly,  the  un-American  and  despotic  action  of 
the  New  York  Assembly,  in  1920,  in  twice  expelling  five 
Socialists,  duly  elected,  merely  upon  the  ground  that  they 
were  Socialists  ("political"  Socialists,  not  I.W.W.)  has  done 
more  to  make  new  I.W.W.  than  all  repressive  measures 
have  done  to  check  the  movement.  It  has  seemed  to  great 
numbers  of  workers  to  justify  the  I.W.W.  argument  that 
the  ballot  is  of  no  use. 

Unhappily,  the  leaders  of  the  Socialist  party  in  America 


662  THE  PEOPLE   VS.  PRIVILEGE 

were  largely  of  German  or  Austrian  birth ;  and  when 
America  entered  the  war  for  democracy  against  Germany, 
in  1917,  the  Socialist  party  as  an  organization,  under  color 
of  opposing  all  war,  took  a  distinctly  disloyal  position. 
This  fact  not  only  arrayed  that  party  against  progress : 
it  also  cast  discredit  upon  the  whole  Socialistic  program. 
Moreover,  for  a  time  at  least,  it  resulted  in  driving  from 
the  organization  many  of  its  most  promising  leaders,  like 
Socialists  Charles  Edward  Russell  and  Upton  Sinclair, 
and  the  (Said  Mr.  Russell,  when  the  party  cast  him  out, 
World  war  « j  am  not  yet  convmced  that  I  cannot  be 

both  a  Socialist  and  an  American ;  but  if  I  have  to  choose, 
I  choose  to  be  an  American.")  Thinkers  revolt,  too,  against 
the  "tyranny"  seemingly  inseparable  from  state  socialism. 

In  1879  Henry  George  published  Progress  and  Poverty. 
This  brilliant  book,  to  its  converts,  transformed  "the  dismal 
Henry  science"  of  political  economy  into  a  religion  of 
George  hope.  George  teaches  that  land  values  are  a 
social  product  created  by  the  growth  of  population.  Society 
therefore  should  take  them  by  taxing  land  up  to  the  rental 
value  of  unimproved  land  equal  in  location  and  quality. 
This  taxation  would  include,  of  course,  the  full  value  of 
the  use  of  city  streets  to  transportation  companies  and 
lighting  companies,  and  of  railroad  right-of-way  —  unless 
the  public  chooses  to  keep  such  enterprises  wholly  in  its  own 
hands.  Thus  taxation  would  reach  all  "natural  monopolies." 

The  advocates  believe  that  such  a  tax  would  exceed 
present  public  expenditure  and  make  other  taxation  unnec- 
And  the  essary.  Therefore  it  is  styled  the  "Single  Tax" 
single  Tax  Other  taxation,  it  is  urged,  "penalizes  industry." 
The  Single  Tax  takes  from  the  individual  only  what  he  has 
never  earned  (the  "unearned  increment"),  and  takes  for 
society  only  what  society  has  created.  Incidentally,  it 
would  put  an  end  to  mischievous  speculation  in  land  — 
since  no  one  could  then  afford  to  hold  land,  unused,  for  a 
rise  —  and  it  would  certainly  prevent  many  forms  of  vicious 
special  privilege.  Indeed,  its  converts  usually  hold  that  all 


MORE  DIRECT  DEMOCRACY  663 

special  privilege  runs  back  to  private  ownership  of  land 
values.  Apart  from  the  question  of  exact  economic  truth, 
the  Single  Tax  doctrine  has  been  one  of  the  inspiring  forces 
of  the  century.  Progress  and  Poverty  was  a  trumpet  call 
for  eager  youth  with  faith  in  humanity  to  rally  to  a  contest 
for  truth  which  should  make  men  free. 

Socialists  believe  in  public  ownership  of  all  the  means 
of  production,  including  machinery :  Single-Taxers  believe 
in  public  ownership  only  of  all  natural  monopolies.  The 
Socialists  agree  to  the  doctrines  of  the  Single  Tax,  but  do 
not  think  it  goes  far  enough.  The  Single-Taxer  denounces 
socialism  as  tyrannical,  and  believes  that,  granted  the  Single 
Tax,  individualism  may  safely  rule  all  other  social  relations. 

THE  "PROGRESSIVE"  MOVEMENT  IN  POLITICS 

In  the  Jacksonian  period,  three  generations  ago,  Amer 
ican  democracy  triumphed  in  theory  over  all  enemies.  But 
real  political  practice  fell  far  short  of  true  democracy.  The 
new  machinery  which  was  devised  for  Jacksonian  democ 
racy  made  the  people's  rule  too  indirect.  It  suited  better 
the  secret  rule  of  Privilege.  It  was  particularly  fitted  for 
the  skillful  manipulation  of  "bosses,"  the  agents  of  Privilege. 

About  1900,  the  conviction  grew  among  political  reform 
ers  that  the  first  need  of  our  Republic  was  more  direct  de 
mocracy,  with  less  power  in  "political  middle-  _ 

»         j-       ^  •      *•          i_      xi  1-1  Thedemand 

men      —  direct  nominations  by  the  people  in  place  for  more 
of  indirect   by  bargaining   conventions ;  a   direct  direct 
check  upon  officials  after  election  by  the  recall ; 
direct  legislation  by  the  initiative   and  referendum ;  direct 
"home  rule"  for  cities,  in  place  of  indirect  rule  at  the  State 
capital ;  direct  election  of   United  States  Senators ;  and  a 
direct  voice  by  women  in  the  government. 

This  need  of  more  democratic  political  machinery  was 
to  be  met,  in  the  early  stages,  almost  wholly  by  State  action, 
not  by  National  law.     It  was  fortunate  that  such  And  the 
could  be  the  case.     One  State  moved  faster  for  states 
direct  legislation  ;  another  State,  for  woman  suffrage  ;   while 


664 


THE  PEOPLE   VS.  PRIVILEGE 


those  States  which  did  not  move  in  any  matter,  and  which 
might  have  had  drag  enough  to  prevent  any  movement  in 
the  beginning  in  a  consolidated  nation,  had  at  least  to  look 
on  with  interest  while  their  more  far-sighted  or  more  reck 
less  neighbors  acted  as  political  experiment  stations. 

For  many  years  after  the  Civil  War,  the  State  seemed  in 
danger  of  sinking  into  a  disused  organ  —  a  sort  of  vermiform 
appendix  in  the  body  politic.  But  now  the  State  re 
awakened,  —  and,  with  it,  new  hope  for  democracy.  In 
1900,  after  years  of  splendid  conflict  under  the  leadership  of 


THE  MINNESOTA  CAPITOL  AT  ST.  PAUL.     From  a  photograph. 

Robert  La  Follette,  Wisconsin  began  to  shake  off  the  rule  of 
bosses  and  machine  politics,  to  control  railroads,  and  to 
build  a  truly  democratic  commonwealth,  with  her  great 
university  for  her  training  school  in  politics  and  in  nobler 
living.  Then,  led  by  William  Uren,  Oregon  adopted  demo 
cratic  machinery  that  outran  anything  before  known  in 
America.  Oklahoma  began  its  statehood  with  most  of 
the  democratic  devices  known  at  the  time,  and  with  some 
novel  experiments,  in  its  first  constitution.  And  the  State 
elections  of  1910  and  1911  witnessed  brilliant  progress  all 
the  way  from  the  redemption  of  corporation-ridden  New 


MORE  DIRECT  DEMOCRACY  665 

Jersey  by  Woodrow  Wilson  (page  639)  to  the  redemption 
of  Southern-Pacific-ridden  California  by  Hiram  Johnson, 
with  the  adoption  of  nearly  all  the  democratic  machinery 
indicated  above  in  several  States. 

The  Australian  ballot l  was  the  first  of  these  reforms  to 
win  general  acceptance.     Under  earlier  practice,  the  parties 
and  candidates  printed  tickets  in  any  form  they  The 
liked,  often  with  deceptive  labels  or  with  fraudu-  Australian 
lent  changes  of  one  or  more  names.     Thoughtful  ballot 
voters,  who  wished  to  vote   independently  of  party  labels, 
found  it  difficult  to  do  so ;  and  a  purchased  voter  received 
his  ballot  from  the  bribe-giver,  who  watched  him  deposit  it. 

Henry  George  (page  662)  began  the  American  agitation  for 
the  Australian  ballot  in  1886  in  New  York.  In  1887  a 
bill  for  the  reform  was  defeated  in  the  legislature ;  and  three 
years  later,  when  public  opinion  compelled  the  old  parties  to 
grant  the  measure,  they  managed  for  a  while  to  deceive  the 
people  with  a  sham.  The  New  York  ballot  of  1890  did 
secure  secrecy ;  but  it  encouraged  straight  party  voting  by 
arranging  that  one  mark  at  the  head  of  a  ticket  should  stand 
for  all  the  candidates  of  the  party  selected.  Five  years 
later,  however,  New  York  secured  the  true  reform  ballot, 
and  by  1914  it  was  in  use  in  46  of  the  48  States. 

Good  election  machinery,  however,  is  not  enough.     Good 
nomination  machinery  is  quite  as  important.     The  people 
must  have  a  fair  chance  to  express  their  will  in  Direct 
selecting  the  candidates  between  whom  the  final  Primaries 
choice  must  be -made.     This  is  the  aim  of  a  movement  for 
"direct  primaries." 

Under  the  old  system  of  nominating  caucuses  and  con 
ventions,  rarely  did  a  tenth  of  the  voters  take  any  part  in 
nominations.  The  matter  was  left  to  the  political 
"machines."  Or,  if  a  popular  contest  did  take  place,  the 
result  was  often  determined  by  fraud  or  trickery  or  by 
absolute  violence.  In  1897  the  young  Robert  M.  La  Follette 

1  The  system  is  essentially  the  English  ballot  system  of  1870,  which  had  been 
improved  in  some  measure  in  some  of  the  Australian  states. 


666  THE  PEOPLE   VS.   PRIVILEGE 

of  Wisconsin,  smarting  under  undeserved  defeat  in  boss- 
owned  nominating  conventions,  worked  out  a  complete 
system  of  "direct  primaries"  for  State  and  Nation,  and 
began  to  agitate  for  its  adoption.  In  1901  Minnesota 
adopted  the  plan,  and  it  is  now  in  force  in  nearly  half  the 
States. 

More  significant  than  choice  of  officials  is  direct  control 
by  the  people  over  the  laws  which  officials  are  to  carry  out. 
Direct  As  a  rule,  even  in  "democracies,"  the  people  have 

legislation  governed  themselves  only  indirectly.  They  have 
chosen  representatives ;  and  these  delegated  individuals 
have  made  the  laws,  —  sometimes  with  little  response  to 
popular  desires.  Radical  democrats  demand  that  the  peo 
ple  take  a  more  direct  and  effective  part  in  lawmaking  by 
the  referendum  and  the  initiative. 

The  referendum  is  the  older  device.  It  consists  merely  in 
referring  to  a  popular  vote  for  final  confirmation  a  law  which 
The  ref-  has  already  passed  the  legislature  or  the  State 
erendum  convention.  The  practice  originated  in  Massa 
chusetts  in  the  ratification  of  the  State  constitution,  in 
1778  and  1780  (page  219).  Since  1820  it  has  been  used 
almost  always  in  our  States  for  the  ratification  of  new 
constitutions  or  constitutional  amendments ;  and  there  has 
been  a  growing  tendency  to  submit  to  popular  vote  also,  in 
State  or  city,  questions  of  liquor  licensing,  bond  issues,  and 
public  ownership.  For  more  than  a  half  century,  Switzer 
land  has  carried  the  practice  much  further.  There  a  certain 
number  of  voters  by  petition  may  compel  the  legislature 
to  submit  any  law  to  popular  decision. 

Switzerland  also  developed  the  true  complement  to  the 
referendum ;  namely,  the  initiative.  By  1870,  in  nearly  all 
The  popular  the  cantons,  a  small  number  of  voters  could  frame 
initiative  anv  }aw  they  desired,  which  the  legislature  then 
was  compelled  to  submit  to  a  popular  vote;  l  and  in  1891 
this  principle  was  adopted  for  the  Swiss  federal  government. 

1  This  device  also  originated  in  America  in  Revolutionary  days,  in  a  provision 
for  amending  the  constitution  of  Georgia,  but  it  took  no  real  root  at  that  time. 


MORE  DIRECT  DEMOCRACY  667 

The  profitable  working  of  these  devices  in  Switzerland  led 
to  a  new  enthusiasm  for  them  in  America ;  and  by  1905  they 
had  become  among  the  most  prominent  matters  on  pro 
gressive  platforms.  In  many  Western  States  they  are 
already  in  force.  Mr.  William  Uren,  in  an  address  before 
the  City  Club  of  Chicago  in  1909,  described  their  working 
in  Oregon  and  their  educational  value,  as  follows :  — 

"  By  the  initiative  .  .  .  eight  per  cent  of  the  voters  are  authorized 
to  file  with  the  secretary  of  state,  not  less  than  four  months  before 
a  general  election,  their  petition  demanding  the  reference  to  the 
people  of  any  measure.  .  .  .  The  full  text  of  the  measure  must 
be  included  in  the  petition,  and  one  petition  will  take  only  one 
measure. 

"  The  referendum  provides  that  five  per  cent  of  the  voters,  at  any 
time  within  ninety  days  after  the  close  of  a  session  of  the  legis 
lature,  may  file  their  petition  demanding  the  submission  of  any 
measure  passed  by  that  legislature.  The  law  is  thereby  held  up 
until  the  next  election.  It  does  not  take  effect  until  it  has  been 
voted  on  and  affirmed  by  the  people;  and  the  vote  required  is  a 
majority  of  those  who  vote  on  the  question. 

"Our  law  for  the  operation  of  the  initiative  and  referendum 
was  amended  in  1907,  providing  that  the  secretary  of  state  should 
order  to  be  printed  and  distributed  by  mail  to  every  registered  voter, 
about  three  months  before  the  election,  a  copy  of  all  the  measures 
that  were  submitted,  and  all  the  arguments  that  were  offered  for  and 
against  them,  principally  at  the  expense  of  the  State.  Those 
offering  arguments  are  required  to  pay  the  actual  cost  of  the 
paper,  printing,  and  press  work  used  for  their  arguments,  but  not 
for  the  measure,  so  that  it  costs  [the  State]  about  seventy-five 
dollars  a  printed  page  for  argument.  It  made  a  book  of  a  hundred 
and  twenty  pages  last  year,  and  the  people  read  it." 

The  "recall"  provides  that  a  certain  percentage  of  voters, 
on  petition,  can  at  any  time  force  any  official  to  stand  for 
election  again   in  opposition  to  some  new  candi 
date.1     The   advantage  of  the   arrangement  over 
waiting  for  a  new  election  in  one  or  two  years,  —  or  several 
years,  in  case  of  judicial  officers,  —  is  that  it  concentrates 

1  An  early  American  precedent  for  the  "recall"  is  mentioned  on  page  245. 


668  THE  PEOPLE   VS.  PRIVILEGE 

attention  upon  the  one  official.  At  a  regular  election,  the 
matter  is  complicated  by  party  issues  and  by  the  distrac 
tions  due  to  choosing  many  other  officials.  Opponents  of 
the  recall  fear  that  the  people  will  use  the  power  hastily, 
especially  in  pique  toward  judicial  officers  without  due 
understanding  of  the  technical  points  involved  in  judicial 
decisions  that  have  offended.  The  reply,  of  course,  is  that 
if  the  people  are  fit  to  choose  untried  men  to  decide  such 
technical  points,  they  must  be  fit  to  choose  whether  they 
will  keep  such  men  after  trial.  Presumably,  when  the  peo 
ple  possess  this  power,  it  will  not  have  to  be  invoked  often. 
So  far,  it  has  not  been  abused  (1920),  and  in  several  cases 
its  use  has  done  much  good. 

In  1906  Oregon  adopted  a  constitutional  amendment 
making  every  elective  officer  in  the  State  subject  to  "recall." 
In  1908,  when  Arizona  applied  for  Statehood,  she  placed  a 
like  provision  in  her  constitution.  Statehood  was  delayed 
for  some  time  on  this  account.  Finally  in  the  summer  of 
1911  a  bill  for  admission  passed  Congress  with  a  provision 
requiring  the  territory  first  to  vote  once  more  upon  this 
clause  of  the  proposed  constitution.  President  Taft  vetoed 
this  bill,  and,  at  his  insistence,  Statehood  was  offered  only 
on  condition  that  the  people  of  Arizona  should  first  vote 
down  the  recall  provision.  This  was  done  in  December, 
1911 ;  but,  at  the  same  time,  all  the  political  leaders  of  the 
territory  proclaimed  in  advance  that,  Statehood  once 
secured,  they  would  work  to  restore  the  recall  to  the  con 
stitution.  This  threat  was  made  good  in  1912. 

Meantime,  President  Taft's  attempt  to  force  a  whole 
people  into  stultifying  itself  awoke  wide  popular  indignation, 
especially  in  the  progressive  West.  In  the  fall  of  1911, 
Washington  placed  the  recall  in  its  constitution  for  all 
officers  except  the  judiciary,  and  California,  by  a  vote  of 
three  to  one,  adopted  an  amendment  for  the  recall,  including 
application  to  judges. 

For  many  years  there  was  an  unmistakable  demand  by 
a  great  majority  of  the  people  for  an  amendment  to  the 


MORE  DIRECT  DEMOCRACY  669 

National  Constitution  to  provide  for  direct  election  of  Sena 
tors.     Time  after  time  the  necessary  resolution  passed  the 
Representatives,  only  to  be  smothered  or  voted  Direct 
down  in  the  upper  House,  which  had  no  desire  to   election  of 
be  brought  closer  to  the  popular  will.     Then  the  Senators 
people  began  to  reach  their  end,  indirectly,  by  State  action. 
Again  Oregon  led  the  way.     In  1904  (and  again  in  1908  by 
a  vote  of   4  to   1),  that  State   (1)   provided   that  when  a 
United  States  Senator  was  to  be  chosen,  the  voters,  at  the 
election  of   the   legislature,   might  express  their  choice   for 
Senator ;  and  (2)  ordered  all  members  of  the  legislature  to 
obey  the   choice   so   indicated.      This  plan  spread  swiftly, 
and  by  1911  it  was  in  force  in  nearly  half  the  States. 

Then  the  reformers  turned  again  to  Congress  for  nation 
wide  and  more  direct  action,  this  time  successfully.  The 
immediate  occasion  was  a  notorious  purchase  of  a  senator- 
ship  from  Illinois  by  "big  business"  for  a  certain  Mr. 
Lorimer.  True,  a  Senate  committee  of  "Stand-patters" 
made  the  usual  whitewashing  report  on  the  case ;  but  that 
report  was  riddled  piteously  by  the  Insurgents  and  by  the 
progressive  press.  Still  on  the  vote  to  expel,  the  Stand 
patters  managed  to  rally  the  one-third  vote  necessary  to 
save  their  colleague.  A  resolution  for  an  amendment  to 
provide  for  popular  election  of  Senators  was  then  pending, 
and  it  was  soon  after  defeated  by  almost  precisely  the  same 
vote.  But  in  the  spring  came  a  special  session  of  the  new 
Congress  with  large  progressive  gains  ;  and,  in  1912,  Lorimer 
was  expelled  and  the  amendment  passed.  Once  more  had 
the  "wrath  of  men"  worked  for  righteousness. 

Just  before  the  Civil  War,  and  during  that  great  struggle, 
there  was  strenuous  agitation  for  a  Woman  Suffrage  amend 
ment  to  the  National   Constitution.     The   more  votes  for 
ardent  advocates  of  the  measure,  like  Susan  B.  women 
Anthony,  Elizabeth  Cady  Stanton,  and   Julia  Ward  Howe, 
had  already  christened  their  proposal  "the  Thirteenth  amend 
ment";  but  they  were  finally  presuaded  to  withdraw  pres 
sure  for  their  cause,  temporarily,  to  make  the  way  easier 


670  THE  PEOPLE   VS.  PRIVILEGE 

for  the  amendments  relating  to  the  Negro.  Up  to  this 
time  the  United  States  had  led  the  world  in  the  "women 
movement,"  but  during  the  long  decadence  that  followed 
the  Civil  War,  that  movement  all  but  slumbered.  With 
the  revival  of  moral  earnestness  about  1890,  the  "equal 
suffrage"  cause  shared  in  the  general  uplift.  Earnest 
efforts  were  promptly  begun  once  more  for  the  "Susan  B. 
Anthony"  amendment,  but  the  earlier  victories  came,  as 
in  most  of  these  democratic  reforms,  through  State  action. 
As  with  the  other  democratic  reforms,  too,  the  early  victo 
ries  came  in  the  West. 

The  first  State  to  grant  the  ballot  to  women  on  full 
equality  l  with  men  was  Wyoming  at  its  admission  in  1890. 
(The  Territory  of  Wyoming  had  established  equal  suffrage 
in  1869  —  the  one  complete  victory  of  the  early  period.) 
Colorado  established  the  reform  by  constitutional  amend 
ment  in  1893.  In  1896  Utah  became  the  third  suffrage 
State,  "completing  the  trinity  of  true  Republics  at  the 
summit  of  the  Rockies";  and  Idaho  followed,  the  same 
year.  For  fifteen  years  no  new  commonwealth  was  won  to 
the  cause,  but  none  the  less  the  "woman  movement"  was 
making  rapid  progress  in  politics,  in  industry,  and  in  social 
recognition.  Then,  in  1910,  Washington  gave  women  the 
full  ballot.  California  did  so  in  her  reform  year,  1911. 
The  democratic  year  1912  (page  677  ff.),  and  its  aftermath 
in  1913-14,  raised  the  total  number  of  suffrage  States 
to  twelve  by  adding  Arizona,  Kansas,  Oregon,  Nevada, 
Montana,  and  Illinois;  and  in  1916  some  4,000,000  women 
voted  for  President  and  Congressmen. 

Illinois  had  been  the  only  State  so  far  east  of  the  Mississippi 
to  give  the  vote  to  women ;  and  there  the  result  was  reached 
by  legislative  action,  not  by  constitutional  amendment,  and 
so  could  not  extend  to  State  officers.  But  in  1917  this 
"Presidential  suffrage"  was  won  for  women  in  Indiana, 
South  Dakota,  North  Dakota,  Rhode  Island,  Michigan,  and 
Nebraska;  and  at  the  November  election  a  constitutional 

1  Many  States  have  long  allowed  a  modified  form  of  suffrage  to  women  in 
local  elections,  especially  in  school  elections. 


VOTES  FOR  WOMEN  671 

amendment  gave  women  the  complete  suffrage  in  the  great 
State  of  New  York.  The  overwhelming  weight  of  that  State 
in  the  National  government  gave  peculiar  importance  to  this 
last  victory  —  spite  of  defeats  at  the  same  election  in  Ohio 
and  Maine  —  and  many  former  opponents  at  once  an 
nounced  that  they  laid  down  their  arms  in  obedience  to  the 
pronounced  will  of  the  American  people.  The  success  of 
the  Susan  B.  Anthony  amendment  for  the  Nation  was  now 
clearly  only  a  matter  of  time.  The  vigorous  part  taken 
by  women  in  winning  the  World  War  did  much  to  remove 
remaining  opposition,  and  in  1920  the  Suffrage  amendment 
became  the  law  of  the  land.  It  was,  however,  not  the 
Thirteenth  amendment,  but  the  Nineteenth ;  and,  instead 
of  being  the  first  country  to  adopt  this  democratic  measure, 
the  United  States  was  the  twenty-second. 

As  the  States  were  renovated  by  new  democratic  ma 
chinery,  they  turned  promptly  to  the  uplift  of  the  common 
life  by  a  long  series  of  social  reforms.  No  one  of  these 
has  been  more  spectacular  in  its  rapid  victory  than  the 
Temperance  movement.  Between  1905  and  1916,  a  union 
of  various  Anti-saloon  forces  (largely  independent  of  the 
regular  Prohibition  party)  made  half  the  States  "dry," 
and  set  up  "county  option"  in  half  the  rest.  The  needs  of 
the  country  during  the  World  War  gave  increased  momen 
tum  to  the  movement,  and  made  National  action  imperative. 
In  1917  a  nation-wide  prohibition  became  law  for  the 
continuance  of  the  war,  and  before  this  law  expired  the 
Eighteenth  amendment  had  established  that  policy  per 
manently  for  America. 

One  factor  in  this  amazing  victory  calls  for  explanation. 
The  Brewery  Combine  early  went  into  politics.  Every 
where  it  fought  Woman  Suffrage  —  because  it  knew  women 
would  fight  the  saloon.  It  fought  the  referendum  and  ini 
tiative,  because  it  feared  the  people,  and  trusted  in  its 
power  to  corrupt  legislatures.  It  fought  every  attempt  to 
check  or  abolish  Special  Privilege,  from  a  lively  expectation 
of  political  help  to  be  received  in  return.  It  fought  the 


672  THE  PROGRESSIVE  MOVEMENT 

election  of  "reformers"  of  all  sorts,  to  protect  itself  or  its 
allies.  And  finally  reformers  of  all  sorts  learned  that  they 
must  fight  the  Liquor  power  —  as  a  step  toward  any  other 
reform. 

As  the  story  has  shown,  each  of  the  leading  reforms,  after 
starting  in  State  action,  soon  appeared  on  the  stage  of 
Theodore  National  politics.  And  during  the  closing  twenty 
Roosevelt  years  of  the  nineteenth  century,  a  group  of  ag 
gressive  young  reformers  appeared  in  public  life  (page  589). 
The  most  picturesque  among  them  was  Theodore  Roosevelt 
of  New  York,  —  police  commissioner  of  New  York  City, 
Civil  Service  Commissioner  (page  597),  Colonel  of  the 
"Rough  Riders"  in  the  Spanish  War  (page  613).  In  1898 
Roosevelt  was  overwhelmingly  elected  governor  of  New 
York,  and  had  begun  to  loom  up  as  a  possible  presidential 
candidate,  to  the  dread  of  the  Republican  machine.  In 
the  Republican  Convention  of  1900  the  bosses  joined  forces 
to  shelve  him  by  nominating  him  for  the  figurehead  vice- 
presidency,  against  his  vehement  protest.  A  few  months 
later,  the  assassination  of  McKinley  made  him  President. 
For  the  first  time  in  our  history,  an  "accidental  President" 
took  place  at  once  as  a  popular  leader,  and  in  1904  he  was 
triumphantly  reflected.  (The  Democratic  party  in  1904 
was  controlled  mainly  by  the  Eastern  and  conservative 
faction,  represented  by  the  candidate,  Judge  Alton  B. 
Parker.) 

The  seven  and  a  half  years  of  the  Roosevelt  adminis 
trations  mark  an  epoch.  In  public  addresses  the  strenuous 
President  denounced  in  startling  terms  the  insolence  and 
criminal  greed  of  aggregated  capital,  and  so  aroused  the 
people  to  the  need  of  action.  The  actual  achievements  of  the 
administration  in  its  professed  work  of  curbing  the  trusts 
and  monopolies  were  less  significant.  Still  the  "classified 
list"  under  the  "civil  service  reform"  law  was  extended  to 
include  even  the  smallest  country  postmasters  in  the  more 
settled  half  of  the  country ;  the  Interstate  Commerce  Com 
mission  was  revived  by  the  Hepburn  amendment  (page  632) ; 


AND  THEODORE  ROOSEVELT 


673 


suits  were  pressed  vigorously  against  many  trusts  under  the 
Sherman  Act  and  Interstate  Commerce  law ;  1  the  scan 
dalous  conditions  in  the  Chicago  stockyards  were  in 
vestigated  ;  a  Pure  Food  law  forbade  Interstate  Commerce 
in  adulterated  foods ; 2  and,  most  important  of  all,  new 
emphasis  was  given  to  the  "conservation  of  National  re 
sources"  —  a  doctrine  formulated  by  Giiford  Pinchot,  and 
popularized  by  the  President. 


THE  AREOW  ROCK  DAM  (Idaho),  still  building  in  1918  when  this  photo  was  taken : 
part  of  one  of  the  most  famous  of  all  the  government's  projects  to  irrigate  arid 
lands.  This  dam  is  67  feet  higher  than  the  great  Roosevelt  Dam  in  Arizona. 

President  Roosevelt  was  attacked  by  certain  of  the  "in 
terests"  as  a  disturber  of  "prosperity" ;  but  he  had  a  hold 
upon  the  nation  such  as  no  other  Presidents  had  approached, 
with  the  exception  of  Washington,  Jefferson,  Jackson,  and 

1  During  the  preceding  administrations  of  Harrison,  Cleveland,  and  McKinley, 
there  had  been  in  all  16  prosecutions;  in  Roosevelt's  seven  years  there  were  44, 
though  little  actual  check  to  the  trusts  resulted. 

2  State  laws  had  already  begun  a  long-needed  war  upon  noxious  adulterations. 
Said  Roosevelt,  in  one  of  his  catchy  phrases,  —  "No  man  may  poison  the  public 
for  private  gain." 


674  THE  PROGRESSIVE  MOVEMENT 

Lincoln.  At  the  same  time  extreme  radicals  disliked  his 
aggressive  foreign  policy  and  his  inclination  to  paternalistic 
despotism  at  home.  Such  critics  pointed  out  (1)  that  he 
used  his  tremendous  personal  and  official  power  to  aid  no 
other  real  "progressive"  in  any  of  the  many  State  con 
tests  with  Privilege;  (2)  that  his  trust  prosecutions  had 
not  hurt  any  money  king;  (3)  that  he  had  intimate  per 
sonal  relations  with  some  of  the  trust  magnates,  —  heads  of 
what  he  chose  to  call  "good  trusts";  (4)  that  during  his 
seven  years  the  number  of  trusts  had  greatly  multiplied  and 
their  capitalization  vastly  increased  (page  639),  along  with 
the  new  device  of  concentrating  power  by  the  system  of 
interlocking  directorates ;  and  (5)  that  he  had  as  yet  taken 
no  stand  to  reform  the  tariff,  in  which  his  "good  trusts" 
were  deeply  interested. 

In  October,  1907,  the  Knickerbocker  Trust  Company 
in  New  York  failed,  from  speculation  and  dishonest  manage- 
The  ment,  and  brought  down  with  it  a  group  of  banks 

"panic"       supposed  to  be  strong.     This  began  the  "panic  of 

1907."  Wall  Street,  and  "big  business"  gener 
ally,  attributed  the  panic  to  "Theodore  the  Meddler," 
who,  they  asserted,  had  destroyed  public  confidence  by  his 
attacks  upon  the  commercial  interests.  Many  radicals,  on 
the  other  hand,  claimed  that  big  business  had  "manufac 
tured"  the  panic,  so  as  to  intimidate  the  President  and  the 
other  reformers  into  keeping  hands  off.  In  any  case,  for 
once,  the  cry  "It  hurts  business"  failed  to  check  the  current 
for  reform. 

Roosevelt  thought  his  Secretary  of  War,  William  H. 
Taft,  especially  fitted  to  carry  on  his  reforms.  Accord  - 

ingly  in  1908,  he  forced  Taft  upon  the  Republi- 
adminis-  cans  as  his  successor.  The  Democrats  nominated 
reaction  Bryan  for  the  third  time.  Between  the  Roosevelt 

Republicans  of  that  time  and  the  Bryan  Demo 
crats  there  were  many  points  of  sympathy ;  while  within 
each  party  a  large  class  was  bitterly  opposed  to  these  re 
form  policies,  and  desired  a  return  to  the  older  attitude  of 
the  government  as  a  promoter  of  business  prosperity  rather 


AND  REACTION  UNDER  TAFT  675 

than  of  human  welfare.  Owing  to  the  general  confidence 
of  large  masses  in  Roosevelt,  and  to  the  aid  given  the  Re 
publicans  by  aggregated  wealth,  Taft  was  elected  over 
whelmingly. 

As  Roosevelt's  Secretary  of  War,  Mr.  Taft  had  been  a 
loyal  subordinate  ;  but  now  it  soon  appeared  that  he  did  not 
himself  believe  in  the  "Roosevelt  policies."  Instead,  he  be 
longed  distinctly  in  the  conservative  ranks. 

A  group  of  capitalists  had  been  trying  to  engross  the 
mineral  wealth  of  Alaska,  in  part  by  fraudulent  entries. 
Roosevelt  had  checked  the  proceeding  by  tempo-  The 
rarily  withdrawing  the  lands  from  entry.  Richard  Ballinger 
Ballinger  had  been  the  attorney  of  the  grasping  c 
ring  of  capitalists,  and  previously  had  served  them  with  in 
formation  even  while  in  the  service  of  the  government. 
President  Taft  was  induced  to  appoint  this  man  his  Sec 
retary  of  the  Interior,  and  it  seemed  as  though  the  grab 
would  then  go  through  under  his  sanction.  The  President 
even  dismissed  both  Gilford  Pinchot  (a  devoted  public  serv 
ant  and  a  man  of  high  standing  in  the  nation)  and  also 
Louis  Glavis,  a  subordinate  of  Ballinger,  who  had  gallantly 
exposed  the  treacherous  designs  of  his  chief  with  necessary 
disregard  for  official  etiquette.1  Happily,  the  sacrifice  of 
Glavis,  the  war  waged  month  after  month  by  Collier's 
Weekly,  and  the  consequent  Congressional  investigation, 
even  though  by  a  packed  committee,  compelled  Ballinger 
to  resign,  and  saved  the  Alaskan  wealth  for  the  nation.  No 
one  suspected  the  President  of  corrupt  motives  ;  but  it  was 
plain  that  the  corrupt  interests  had  his  ear.  Other  events 
made  his  position  clear.  He  did  not  scruple  to  use  his  vast 
power  of  patronage  to  injure  progressive  Congressmen  in 
their  home  districts. 

Another  public  clash  between  President  Taft  and  the 
Progressives  came  on  the  tariff  question.  The  Republican 
platform  of  1908  had  declared  for  a  thoroughgoing  revision 
of  the  Dingley  tariff  (page  600)  ,  asserting  that  duties  ought 


is'  "insubordination"  consisted  in  fealty  to  the  American  people  rather 
than  to  a  traitorous  superior  in  office. 


676  THE  PROGRESSIVE  MOVEMENT 

only  to  "equal  the  difference  between  the  cost  of  produc 
tion  at  home  and  abroad,  together  with  a  reasonable  profit 
The  Payne-  ^or  American  industries."1  Mr.  Taft,  too,  had 
Aidnch  waged  his  campaign  largely  on  definite  pledges  for 
tariff  reduction.  Shrewd  observers  doubted  some 
what  whether  the  politicians  of  the  party  were  not  too 
thoroughly  in  the  grip  of  the  trusts  to  make  any  real  inroad 
upon  the  protected  interests ;  and  the  result  justified  the 
skeptical  prophecies  that  any  revision  by  the  Republican 
machine  of  that  day  would  be  a  revision  upward.  The 
Payne- Aldrich  tariff  of  1910,  while  making  improvements 
on  a  few  points,  actually  aggravated  the  evils  which  the 
nation  had  expected  to  have  remedied.  It  was  a  brazen 
defiance  of  party  pledges  in  the  campaign.  The  House 
committee,  which  framed  the  bill,  was  notorious,  made  up, 
almost  to  a  man,  of  representatives  of  beneficiaries  of  pro 
tection,  —  a  clear  case  of  turning  the  place  of  sheep  dogs 
over  to  wolves. 

The  bill  and  the  committee  were  attacked  fiercely  by  a 
large  number  of  the  more  independent  Republican  papers 
And  the  and  leaders ;  but  the  great  body  of  Republican 
insurgents  Congressmen,  it  was  soon  clear,  would  "stand 
pat"  for  the  "System."  A  radical  section  then  broke  away 
in  a  definite  "Insurgent"  movement.  In  the  House,  the 
"System"  Speaker,  "Uncle  Joe"  Cannon,  aided  by  the  nec 
essary  number  of  "System"  Democrats,  easily  forced  the  bill 
through,  with  brief  consideration.  In  the  Senate,  where 
debate  could  not  so  easily  be  muzzled,  insurgent  Republi 
can  leaders  like  La  Follette  and  Cummins  exposed  merci 
lessly  the  atrocities  of  the  measure,  though  they  could 
not  hinder  its  becoming  law.  And  then  the  compliant 
President,  in  attempts  to  defend  his  "Stand-pat"  friends 
from  public  criticism,  declared  it  the  best  tariff  ever 
enacted. 

The  Congressional  election  of  1910  was  a  revolution.     The 

1  Somewhat  more  definitely,  the  Democratic  platform  declared  for  immediate 
reduction  of  duties  on  necessaries  and  for  placing  on  the  "free  list"  all  "articles 
entering  into  competition  with  trust-controlled  products." 


AND  THE  ELECTION  OF  1912  677 

overwhelming  Republican  majority  was  wiped  out  by  as  large 
a  Democratic  majority  ;  and  in  various  impregnable  Repub 
lican  districts,  Insurgents  succeeded  Stand-patters.  Even  in 
the  slowly  changing  Senate,  Democrats  and  Insurgents  to 
gether  mustered  a  clear  majority.  Some  progressive  legis 
lation  was  now  enacted.  A  "parcel  post"  law,  similar  to 
those  long  in  use  in  European  countries,  struck  down  the  in 
famous  monopoly  of  the  great  express  companies ;  the  ad 
mirable  "Children's  Bureau"  was  added  to  the  government 
machinery ;  and  constitutional  amendments  were  at  last 
enacted  providing  for  income  taxes  and  direct  election  of 
Senators  (pages  600,  669). 

In  1912  Roosevelt  announced  himself  a  candidate  against 
Taft  for  the  Republican  Presidential  nomination.     There 
followed  a  bitter  campaign  of  disgraceful  recrimi-  The  election 
nation    between    the   President    and    his    former  °£*912: 
friend  and  chief.     In  13  States,  Republican  voters  Republican 
could  then  express  their  choice  for  a  candidate  in  Convention 
direct  primaries  (page  665).     Roosevelt  carried  9  of  these; 
La  Follette,  2 ;  and  Taft,  2.     President  Taft,  however,  con 
trolled  the  solid  mass  of  Southern  delegates  and  the  ma 
chinery    of    the    National    Convention.       The    credentials 
committee   "threw  out"  many  Roosevelt  delegations  from 
States  where   there   were    "contests,"   and    Taft  And 
won    the    nomination.      Roosevelt    declared    the  Roosevelt's 
nomination  "a  barefaced  steal,"  asserted  that  no  bolt 
honest  man  could  vote    for  a  ticket  "based  on  dishonor," 
and  called  a  mass  meeting  of  progressives   to   organize  a 
new  party. 

Meantime,   the   Democratic   Convention,    in   session   for 
nine  days  at  Baltimore,  made  significant  history.     In  this 
party,  too,  the  preceding  campaign   had  been  a  The 
bitter    contest    between    open    progressives    and  Democratic 
more  or  less  secret  reactionaries.     When  the  Con-  c 
vention  met,  the  old  bosses   were  in  control  of  a  majority 
of  votes.     They  made  plain  their  intention  to  organize  the 
meeting  in  their  interest  by  putting  forward  for  the  tempo 
rary  chairmanship  Judge  Alton  B.  Parker  (page  672).     Mr. 


678  THE  PROGRESSIVE  MOVEMENT 

Bryan  had  declined  to  be  a  candidate  for  the  presidency 
again,  and  he  now  stepped  forward  as  a  courageous  and 
And  Mr.  skillful  champion  of  the  progressive  element,  wag- 
Bryan  mg  a  contest  that  finally  wrested  control  from 
the  bosses  and  turned  his  party  over  to  the  real  democracy. 

Bryan  first  appealed  to  the  candidates  for  the  presidential 
nomination  to  oppose  the  bosses'  choice  for  chairman,  —  a 
man  "conspicuously  identified,  in  the  eyes  of  the  public, 
with  the  reactionary  element."  Woodrow  Wilson  alone 
stood  this  "acid  test."  Other  candidates  evaded,  or  pleaded 
for  harmony,  to  avoid  offending  possible  supporters.  Wilson 
frankly  and  cordially  approved  Bryan's  purpose.  Thus  the 
issue  was  drawn,  and  Wilson  was  marked,  even  more 
clearly  than  before,  as  the  true  candidate  of  the  progressives. 
The  bosses  seated  their  man  for  chairman,  but  the  Demo 
cratic  masses  throughout  the  country  shouted  approval  of 
Bryan  and  Wilson. 

Next  Mr.  Bryan  startled  the  convention  and  the  country 
by  a  daring  resolution  —  which  was  carried  almost  unani 
mously  —  declaring  the  convention  opposed  to  the  nomi 
nation  of  any  candidate  "who  is  the  representative  of,  or 
under  obligations  to,  J.  Pierpont  Morgan,  Thomas  F.  Ryan, 
August  Belmont,  or  any  other  member  of  the  privilege- 
hunting  and  favor-seeking  class."  Two  of  the  gentlemen 
named  sat  in  the  Convention.  In  the  debate  Mr.  Bryan 
said :  — 

"Extraordinary  conditions  need  extraordinary  remedies.  .  .  . 
There  is  not  a  delegate  who  does  not  know  that  an  effort  is  being 
made  right  now  to  sell  the  Democratic  party  into  bondage  to  the 
predatory  interests  of  the  country.  It  is  the  most  brazen,  the 
most  insolent,  the  most  impudent  attempt  that  has  been  made  in 
the  history  of  American  politics  to  dominate  a  convention,  stifle 
the  honest  sentiment  of  a  people,  and  make  the  nominee  the  bond 
slave  of  the  men  who  exploit  this  country.  .  .  .  No  sense  of 
politeness  to  such  men  will  keep  me  from  protecting  my  party 
from  the  disgrace  they  inflict  upon  it." 

Champ  Clark  of  Missouri  at  one  time  had  a  majority  of 
the  delegates  for  the  nomination,  but  the  Democratic  rule 


AND  THE  ELECTION  OF  1912  679 

required  a  two-thirds  majority.     As  the  balloting  proceeded 
slowly  day  after  day,  Wilson  gained  steadily,  mainly  be 
cause  of  thousands  of  telegrams  from  "the  people  Nomination 
at    home,"    threatening,    urging,    imploring   their  of  Wilson 
representatives  to  support  Bryan's  leadership  and  Wilson's 
candidacy.     On   the   forty-sixth   ballot  Wilson  was   nomi 
nated.     The  progressive  element,  which  had  failed  in  the  Re 
publican  Convention,  had  conquered  in  the  Democratic. 

And   soon   another  progressive   ticket   was   in   the  field. 
Roosevelt's  friends  proceeded  with  their  new  organization, 
took  the  name  the  Progressive  party,  and  nomi-  The  Pro. 
nated  Roosevelt  upon  an   admirable  radical  plat-  gressive 
form  which    included  Woman  Suffrage.       Many  party 
ardent  reformers   rallied  to  this   long-desired  opportunity 
for  a  new  alignment  in  politics;   but   a  large  number  of 
their  old  associates  felt  that  the  movement  was  ill-timed, 
when  the  Baltimore  nomination  had  offered  so  excellent  an 
opportunity  to  progressives. 

Woodrow  Wilson  was  elected  by  the  largest  electoral 
plurality  in  our  history,  the  vote  standing,  —  Wilson, 
435;  Roosevelt,  88;  Taft,  8.  Wilson's  popular  vote 
exceeded  that  of  Roosevelt  by  over  two  million ;  and 
Roosevelt's  was  nearly  700,000  more  than  Taft's.  At  the 
same  time,  it  was  plain  that  the  result  was  due  to  the  split 
in  the  Republican  party.  Mr.  Wilson  was  far  from  getting 
a  popular  majority  :  indeed  he  had  fewer  votes  than  the 
defeated  Bryan  got  four  years  before,  —  a  significant  com 
mentary  upon  the  imperfection  of  our  political  machinery. 

Mr.  Wilson's  first  two  years  (1913-1914)  saw  a  remarkable 
record  of  political  promises  fulfilled.  He  called  Congress 
at  once  in  a  special  session,  and  kept  it  at  work  continu 
ously  for  almost  the  whole  twenty -four  months.  The  three 
great  problems  were  the  tariff,  the  currency,  and  the  trusts. 
Each  was  dealt  with  fully,  after  careful  consideration. 

The  Underwood  tariff  was  a  genuine  "revision  downward," 
and  its  making  was  at  least  less  influenced  by  The  Under- 
great  "special  interests"  than  that  of  any  tariff  wood  Tariff 
since  the  Civil  War.  Business  had  wailed  "Ruin";  but 


680  THE  PROGRESSIVE  MOVEMENT 

no  ruin  came,  and  business  quickly  accepted  the  new 
situation. 

The  Federal  Reserve  Act  revised  the  banking  laws,  made 
the  currency  of  the  country  more  elastic,  and  checked 
somewhat  the  possibility  of  its  being  controlled  by  the 
"  money  trust  "  —  so  long  as  the  government  itself  represents 
the  people.  A  few  months  later  (July,  1914)  the  unexpected 
outbreak  of  the  European  war  closed  the  great  money 
centers  of  the  world  without  warning ;  but  in  this  country 
no  bank  felt  obliged  to  call  its  loans.  Admirers  of  the  law 
claim  that  it  has  made  the  old-fashioned  "panic"  almost 
impossible ;  and  certainly  many  of  the  great  banks  which 
had  been  frantically  alarmed  by  the  prospect  of  the  law 
soon  became  its  warm  supporters. 

A  Federal  Trade  Commission  was  created,  to  investigate 
complaints  of  unfair  dealing  by  large  concerns  toward  smaller 
The  Clayton  competitors  and  to  provide  helpful  information 
Anti-Trust  and  advice  when  appealed  to  by  legitimate  busi 
ness.  This  new  beneficent  branch  of  the  govern 
ment  holds  a  place  in  the  field  of  trade  much  like  that  of  the 
great  Interstate  Commerce  Commission  in  the  field  of  trans 
portation.  At  the  same  time  the  Clayton  Anti-Trust  Act 
sought  to  check  the  evil  of  "interlocking  directorates,"  and 
to  give  the  courts  clear  rules  for  dealing  with  Trust  offenses 
in  place  of  the  vagueness  of  the  old  Sherman  law. 

In  addition  to  meeting  so  the  three  pressing  problems,  the 
administration  secured  a  law  for  a  graduated  income  tax, 
The  income  shifting  the  burden  of  the  government  in  part 
Tax  from  the  poor  to  the  very  rich.  Quite  as  impor 

tant  was  a  new  and  needed  protection  given  to  labor 
unions.  The  courts  had  begun  to  threaten  unions  with 
punishment  for  strikes,  under  the  provision  of  the  Sherman 
law  forbidding  "conspiracies  in  restraint  of  trade."  The 
Clayton  Act  expressly  exempted  labor  combinations  from  such 
prosecution.  "The  labor  of  a  human  being,"  runs  this 
noble  provision,  "is  not  an  article  of  commerce."  Equally 
pleasing  to  Labor  was  another  law  checking  the  tendency 
to  "government  by  injunction." 


AND  WOODROW  WILSON  681 

J 

Most  of  this  legislation  has  since  been  rendered  futile  by 
the  courts,  but  at  the  time  progressives  were  jubilant. 
President  Wilson  had  long  been  known  as  a  leading 
American  scholar,  a  brilliant  writer,  and  a  great  teacher 
and  university  president;  but  his  warmest  admirers  had 
hardly  hoped  for  such  efficient  leadership  from  "the  school 
master  in  politics."  This  splendid  constructive  record  was 


THE  UNITED  STATES  SUPREME  COURT  IN  1920. 

Brandeis  Pitney  McReynolds  Clarke 

Day  McKenna  White  Holmes  Van  Devanter 

his  work;    and  he  carried  it  to  victory  by   a  party  long 
unused  to  union  and  with  large  elements  ready  to  rebel  if 
they  dared.     He  won  his  victory,  too,  not  by  abus-  Mr 
ing  his  power  of  patronage  to  keep  Congressmen  in  Wilson's 
line,   but  by  sheer  skill   and  force  of  character,  lead' 
aided  by  the  general  consciousness   that  the   nation   was 
rallying  to  his  program. 

The  second  half  of  this  first  term  was  darkened  and  con 
fused  by  terrible  foreign  complications  (below) ;  but  these 
years,  too,  saw  sound  progress  in  domestic  reform.  A  Good 


682  WOODROW  WILSON 

Roads  law  offered  national  aid  to  the  States  in  building 
roads,  so  as  to  bring  the  farmer's  market  nearer  to  him. 
Wilson's  The  Smith-Lever  Agricultural  Education  Act  offered 
second  cooperation  with  the  States  in  teaching  the  farmer 
how  to  use  the  soil  more  profitably.  And  the 
Rural  Credits9  law  made  the  first  attempt  in  our  history  to 
get  for  the  farmer  the  credit  and  the  low  interest  commonly 
enjoyed  by  other  business  interests.  A  Workman's  Com 
pensation  law  (page  655),  of  the  most  advanced  character, 
was  made  to  apply  to  all  Federal  employees.  And  the 
Child-Labor  law  (page  654)  sought  to  free  the  children  of 
the  South  from  crushing  labor  in  factories  and  mines. 

The  last  two  of  these  bills  had  passed  the  House,  but  were 
being  still  held  up  in  the  Senate  in  August  of  1916.  Presi 
dent  Wilson  made  a  quiet  visit  to  the  Senate  wing  of  the 
Capitol,  met  the  Democratic  leaders  there,  and  demanded 
that  they  pass  both  bills  before  adjournment.  Said  a  hos 
tile  periodical  —  "That  is  'polities'  but  it  is  politics  in  a  high 
and  statesmanlike  sense  of  the  word."  (In  1918  the  Child- 
Labor  law  was  declared  unconstitutional  by  the  Supreme 
Court ;  but  the  same  end  was  at  once  secured  by  a  new 
"  Child-Labor  Tax  "  law.) 

Foreign  perils,  however,  were  the  chief  mark  of  President 
Wilson's  second  two  years,  —  foreign  perils  more  complicated 
Mexican  anc^  threatening  than  any  President  before  him  had 
complied-  had  to  face.  For  years  Mexico  had  been  weltering 
in  political  assassination  and  revolution.  Finally 
the  " Constitutionalist"  chief,  Carranza,  became  master ;  re 
mained  so  much  longer  than  any  recent  predecessor,  largely 
because  of  prompt  recognition  by  the  United  States ;  and  set 
himself  stubbornly  to  the  gigantic  task  of  rebuilding  his 
country,  with  at  first  much  show  of  progress.  He  did  not 
prove  able,  it  is  true,  to  keep  down  revolt  and  brigandage  in 
remote  mountainous  districts  or  on  the  American  border. 
The  Mexican  people  hate  and  fear  the  Americans,  and  bandits 
who  repeatedly  took  American  citizens  from  railroad  trains 
to  murder  them,  and  who  raided  American  towns  across  the 


AND  MEXICO  683 

border  with  every  form  of  outrage,  were  always  sheltered 
among  their  own  people.  To  one  who  knows  only  this  side 
of  the  story  it  would  seem  that  few  wars  have  had  more 
provocation  than  Mexico  offered  the  United  States. 

On  the  other  hand,  lawless  and  violent  Americans  along 
the  frontier  have  been  guilty  of  numerous  outrages  on  un 
protected  Mexican  soil,  of  which  the  mass  of  Americans 
never  hear.  Great  American  "interests,"  too,  hungry  to 
seize  for  themselves  raw  wealth  of  oil  and  rubber,  which 
Carranza  was  seeking  to  keep  for  a  people's  inheritance, 
constantly  clamored  for  American  intervention  to  "restore 
order  "  in  Mexico.  The  skillful  propaganda  of  these  interests 
was  the  more  dangerous  because  a  deplorably  large  part  of 
American  society,  with  its  customary  harsh  contempt  for 
alien  peoples,  feels  that  sooner  or  later  we  must  "clean  up" 
Mexico  by  taking  it  away  from  a  race  incapable  of  civilization. 
But  President  Wilson,  with  a  noble  sympathy  for  Wilson 
a  distressed  people  feeling  its  way  stumblingly  to-  avoids  war 
ward  a  national  life,  held  resolutely  to  a  policy  of  "watchful 
waiting,"  and  charged  publicly  that  Mexican  disorders  were 
due  largely  to  secret  incitement  and  support  from  American 
interests  determined  to  embroil  the  two  countries.  Critics 
derided  this  policy  bitterly  as  responsible  for  the  unavenged 
murder  of  American  citizens.  Admirers  declared  it  right  and 
wise.  Nothing  else,  they  urged,  could  have  done  so  much 
to  allay  the  ancient  distrust  felt  toward  us  by  all  our  Latin- 
American  neighbors,  whose  friendship  we  so  much  desire. 
At  the  same  time  the  Carranza  government  persisted  in 
expressing  bitter  distrust  of  President  Wilson,  partly  per 
haps  because  on  two  occasions  of  extreme  provocation 
he  so  far  abandoned  his  general  policy  as  to  send  troops 
into  Mexico  —  in  both  cases  with  little  result. 

Meantime  in  the  Old  World  heavier  clouds  had  long  been 
massing ;  and  in  July  of  1914  had  come  a  flash  to  set  the 
world  ablaze  —  from  the  policy  of  the  Austrian  Empire 
toward  her  troublesome  "Mexico,"  Serbia.  The  story  of 
American  history  now  becomes  entangled  inextricably,  for 
the  time  at  least,  with  the  complex  web  of  world  history. 


PAET  XII  — THE  WORLD  WAK 
CHAPTER  XLIII 

HOW  THE  WAR  CAME 

I.   THE  MATERIALS  FOR  CONFLAGRATION 

WITHIN  our  own  nation  (as  of  course  also  in  every  other) 
we  have  seen  a  fierce  and  ever-growing  struggle  for  wealth 
Anti-social  and  power  between  individuals  and  between 
forces  classes.  At  no  distant  future,  that  struggle  must 

become  a  menace  to  civilization,  unless  we  learn  to  sub 
stitute  for  selfish  rivalry  some  form  of  cooperation  for  the 
common  good.  Intranational  competition,  however,  is 
ameliorated  by  the  fact  that  it  is  m^ranational.  There 
are  legislatures  to  prescribe  rules  of  the  game,  and  courts 
to  arbitrate  disputes ;  and  so,  even  in  our  threatening  class- 
struggle,  we  can  postpone,  and  perhaps  ultimately  avoid,  a 
fatal  clash. 

Civilization  is  endangered  more  immediately  by  a  like 
competition  between  nations  themselves.  In  1900  the  world 
held  some  fifty  of  these  larger  "  individuals,"  engaged  (all 
that  were  strong  enough  to  risk  it)  in  a  precisely  similar 
struggle  for  wealth  and  power.  And  for  them  there  was 
no  higher  arbiter,  no  common  legislature,  to  soften  the 
brutal  maxim,  "  The  race  is  to  the  strong,  and  the  Devil 
take  the  hindmost." 

For  any  nation  not  to  engage  in  that  race  to  the  full 
extent  of  its  powers  would  have  been  to  acquiesce  cravenly 
in  inferiority,  —  less  labor  and  poorer  pay  for  its  working- 
men,  less  profit  for  its  capital,  and  therefore  a  lower  civiliza 
tion.  Modern  civilization  is  based  primarily  on  industrial 
ism  ;  and  the  life  blood  of  modern  industrialism  is  trade : 
trade  not  merely  with  other  civilized  nations,  but  also  for 

684 


TRADE  RIVALRIES  685 

the  products  of  tropical  and  subtropical  regions,  where  a 
few  years  ago  no  strong  state  existed,  and  where,  accord 
ingly,  civilized  capitalists  found  the  best  chances  to  exploit 
the  raw  wealth,  including  the  labor  of  defenseless  human 
beings. 

Under  existing  conditions  it  is  futile  to  blame  a  nation  for 
entering  the  struggle.  The  blame  lies  in  the  amazing  fact 
that  no  nation  made  any  determined  and  intelligent  effort  to 
change  these  conditions  so  as  to  abolish  commercial  cannibalism. 
Rightly  seen,  the  raw  wealth  of  the  globe  belongs  to  no  one  or 
two  arbitrary  divisions  of  the  globe's  population :  it  is  the 
heritage  of  the  whole  world,  present  and  to  come;  and  there 
must  be  a  world  organization  to  see  it  properly  safeguarded  and 
utilized.  True,  this  is  much  to  ask  of  a  world  in  which  each  nation 
still  permits  grasping  individuals  to  engross  natural  wealth  that 
should  belong  to  all  its  people.  But  if  the  task  is  great,  so  is  the 
peril  in  not  accomplishing  it.  The  alternative  is  ruin.  The 
hope  that  we  may  achieve  a  world  federation  to  save  civiliza 
tion,  lies  in  the  old  imperative,  "We  can,  because  we  must." 

Ever  since  Columbus  and  da  Gama  disclosed  to  little 
Europe  the  vast  new  worlds  east  and  west,  the  European 
"  powers  "  have  been  grabbing  greedily  at  "  colonial  Inter_ 
empire."     That  is,  each  has  sought  to  seize  the  national 
largest  possible  part  of  the  world's  raw  materials  nvalry 
for   its   factories,  and    the  largest  markets  for  its   factory 
output.     In    the   eighteenth   century,   this   rivalry  became 
world- wide  war.     From  1689  to  1783,  France  and  England 
wrestled  incessantly  for  world  empire,  grappling  on  every 
continent   and   every   sea,   while,   as  allies  of   this   one   or 
of  that,  the  other  powders   grasped  at  crumbs  of  European 
booty,  and  —  more  distant  but  more  directly  involved  - 
Black    men    speared    one    another    on    the    banks   of    the 
Senegal,  Red  men  scalped   one   another  on   the   shores   of 
the  Great    Lakes,  and  the  native  populations  of   ancient 
India  trampled  one  another  under  the  feet  of  trumpeting 
elephants.     The  close  saw  France  almost  stripped  of  her 
old   dependencies ;     and,   a   little   later,   when   she   seemed 
helpless  in  her  Revolution,  England  attacked  her  again  to 


686  HOW  THE  WAR  CAME 

complete  the  victory.  For  a  while  Napoleon  seemed  likely 
to  regain  the  Mississippi  valley  and  India;  hut  Waterloo 
left  England  "  the  mightiest  nation  upon  earth,"  for  some 
seventy  years  without  an  aggressive  rival  for  world  do 
minion.  During  that  period,  other  European  nations  got 
along  somehow  (though  less  prosperous  than  England)  be 
cause  trade  had  not  yet  become  the  supremely  vital  thing 
it  was  soon  to  be.  The  Industrial  Revolution,  which  had 
transformed  England  by  1800,  and  America  by  1825,  and 
France  by  1840,  did  not  really  reach  Germany  until  nearly 
1870.  Even  then,  for  a  while,  France  and  Germany  were 
occupied  mainly  with  their  intense  European  rivalry.  But 
steam  and  electricity  were  swiftly  drawing  the  globe's  most 
distant  provinces  into  intimate  unity,  and  world  trade  was 
taking  on  a  new  importance.  Accordingly,  after  1871,  the 
new  capitalistic  French  Republic  began  to  seek  expansion 
in  north  Africa  and  southeastern  Asia;  and  in  1884,  at  the 
Congress  of  Berlin,  the  new  capitalistic  German  Empire 
gave  notice  that  thenceforth  it  meant  to  share  in  the  plunder. 
The  next  quarter-century  saw  a  mad  scramble  between  Ger 
many,  France,  and  the  already  partially  sated  England  for 
the  world's  remaining  rich  provinces  defended  only  by  "in 
ferior"  races.  Meanwhile  the  United  States,  occupied  until 
then  by  the  appropriation  of  her  own  vast  continent  from 
ocean  to  ocean,  began  to  reach  out  for  the  islands  of  the 
sea;  and  Russia  accelerated  her  century-long  expansion 
in  Asia  toward  India  (threatening  England's  hold  there) 
and  toward  ice-free  Pacific  ports,  threatening  China  and 
Japan,  until  checked  in  the  Russo-Jap  War  of  1904-1905. 

This  nineteenth-century  exploitation,  unlike  that  of  the 
eighteenth,  had  been  carried  forward  at  the  expense  of 
savage  or  semi-barbarous  peoples  only.  For  a  hundred 
years  there  had  been  no  "great"  war  between  "Christian" 
nations  waged  openly  for  greed.1  Indeed,  toward  the  close, 

1  The  Crimean  and  Spanish-American  wars  were  not  avowedly  for  empire. 
The  Mexican  War  is  more  to  the  point ;  but  it  was  a  trifling  struggle,  and  much 
of  the  world  was  ready  to  acquiesce  in  a  too  common  American  opinion  that  the 
weak  and  disorganized  Mexicans  had  no  rights  that  a  powerful  neighbor  was 
bound  to  respect. 


EUROPEAN  ALLIANCES  "FOR  PEACE"  687 

whenever  one  nation  made  an  important  seizure  of  booty, 
some  international  conference  arranged  compensatory  gains 
for  any  seriously  discontented  rival  —  and  so  preserved 
temporarily  a  delicate  " balance"  of  interests. 

But  this  balance  was  one  of  exceedingly  unstable  equilib 
rium.     A   touch   might    tip    it    into  universal    ruin.     And 
there  were  no  materials  to  continue  adjusting  it  on  ^^  the 
the  old  plan.     The  world  was  now  parceled  out.  approach 
Further  expansion  of  consequence  by  any  "power" 
meant   direct   conflict   with   some   other   "power."     More 
over,  so  complicated  had  rivalries  and  alliances  become,  any 
conflict  at  all  now  meant  a  world  conflict;    and,  so  "im 
proved"  were  agencies  of  destruction,  a  world  struggle  now 
meant  ruin  out  of  all  comparison  with  earlier  wars. 

To-day  this  is  plain  enough.  But  until  the  late  summer 
of  1914  the  certain  danger  (and  the  only  way  of  escape)  was 
glimpsed  but  dimly  and  by  only  a  few  "  dreamers."  Com 
placently  the  peoples  and  their  "practical"  statesmen  con 
tinued  to  drift  on  the  brink  of  unparalleled  disaster.  It 
seems  now  almost  incredible  that  a  world  inhabited  by 
rational  beings  should  not  at  least  have  made  some  deter 
mined  effort  to  prepare  for  peace;  but  in  plain  fact  (apart 
from  the  rather  empty  gestures  discussed  in  chapter  xl) 
the  mightier  nations  merely  hastened  the  catastrophe  by 
preparing  only  for  war. 

By  1910,  Europe  had  aligned  itself  in  two  camps,  the 
Triple  Alliance  and  the  Triple  Entente. 

1.    After  Bismarck  conquered  France  in  1871,  he  sought 
to  isolate  her  so  as  to  keep  her  from  finding  any  ally  in  a 
possible  "war  of  revenge."     To  this  end  he  culti-  Bismarck>s 
vated  friendship  with  all  other  European  powers,  Triple 
but  especially  with  Russia  and  Austria.     Austria  m* 
he  had  beaten  in  war  only  a  few  years  earlier  (1866) ;   but 
he  had  treated  her  with  marked  gentleness  in  the  peace 
treaty,   and    the   ruling   German   element  in  Austria   was 
quite  ready  now  to  find  backing  in  the  powerful  and  suc 
cessful  German  Empire. 


688  HOW  THE  WAR  CAME 

Soon,  however,  Bismarck  found  that  he  must  choose  be 
tween  Austria  and  Russia.  These  two  were  bitter  rivals  for 
control  in  the  Balkans.  The  Slav  peoples  there,  recently 
freed  from  the  Turks,  looked  naturally  to  Russia,  who  had 
won  their  freedom  for  them,  as  the  "Big  Brother"  of  all 
Slavs.  But  Austria,  shut  out  now  by  the  new  Germany  from 
control  in  central  Europe,  was  bent  upon  aggrandizement  to 
the  south.  In  particular  her  statesmen  meant  to  win  a 
strip  of  territory  through  to  Saloniki,  on  the  Aegean,  so  that, 
with  a  railroad  thither,  they  might  control  the  rich  Aegean 
trade.  Accordingly  Austria  sought  always  to  keep  Serbia 
weak  and  small,  that  she  might  interpose  no  barrier  to  these 
ambitious  plans ;  while  Russia,  hating  Austria  even  more 
than  she  loved  the  Balkan  Slavs,  backed  Serbia. 

This  rivalry  became  so  acute  by  1879  that  there  was 
always  danger  of  war ;  and  in  that  year  Bismarck  chose  to 
side  with  Austria  as  the  surer  ally.  Three  years  later,  he 
drew  Italy  into  the  league,  making  it  the  Triple  Alliance. 
Italy  was  so  bitterly  enraged  at  the  French  seizure  of  Tunis 
in  that  year,  in  flat  disregard  of  Italian  imperialistic  ambi 
tions  there,  that  she  laid  aside  her  ancient  differences  with 
Austria  for  a  time  and  agreed  to  aid  the  central  empires  in 
any  war  in  which  they  should  be  attacked  by  two  or  more 
powers  —  in  return  for  backing  in  her  colonial  ambitions. 

2.  Then  Russia  a'nd  France,  each  isolated  in  Europe,  drew 
together  for  mutual  protection  into  a  "Dual  Alliance"  (1884). 
The  Dual  This  left  England  alone  of  the  Great  Powers  outside 
Alliance  these  alliances.  Bismarck  hoped  to  draw  her  into 
his  "triple"  league,  and  his  hope  was  not  unreasonable.  In 
the  eighties  and  nineties,  England  and  France  were  bitter 
rivals  in  Africa,  and  England  and  Russia,  in  Asia.  England, 
however,  clung  to  a  proud  policy  of  "splendid  isolation." 
Then,  after  Bismarck's  fall,  she  began  to  see  in  the  German 
Emperor's  colonial  ambitions  a  more  threatening  rival  than 
France ;  and  Russia's  defeat  by  Japan  made  Russia  less  dan 
gerous.  German  militarism,  too,  was  hateful  to  English 
democracy.  Moreover,  England  and  France  were  daily 


THE  BALKAN  SEED  PLOT  689 

coining  to  a  better  understanding,  and  in  1903  a  standing 
arbitration  treaty  made  war  between  them  much  less  likely. 
Soon  afterward,  England  and  Russia  succeeded  in  agreeing 
upon  a  line  in  Persia  to  separate  the  "influence"  of  one 
power  in  that  country  from  the  "influence"  of  the  other,  so 
removing  all  immediate  prospect  of  trouble  between  the  two. 
From  this  time  the  Dual  Alliance  became  the  Triple  En 
tente  —  England,  France,  and  Russia.  England  was  not 
bound  by  definite  treaty  to  give  either  country  aid  in  war ; 
but  it  was  plain  that  France  and  Russia  were  her  friends. 

Each  of  the  two  huge  leagues  always  protested  that  its 
aim  was  peace.  No  doubt  many  men  in  both  —  and  nearly 
all  in  one  —  did  shrink  from  precipitating  a  conflict  between 
such  enormous  forces  under  the  new  conditions  of  army 
organization,  quick  transportation,  and  deadly  explosives. 
For  half  a  century,  except  for  the  minor  struggles  in  the 
half-savage  Balkans,  Europe  rested  in  an  "armed  peace." 
But  this  "peace"  was  based  upon  fear,  and  it  was  costly. 
Year  by  year,  each  alliance  strove  to  make  its  armies  and 
navies  mightier  than  the  other's.  Huge  and  huger  cannon 
were  invented,  only  to  be  cast  into  the  scrap  heap  for  still 
huger  ones.  A  dreadnaught  costing  millions  was  scrapped 
in  a  few  months  by  some  costlier  design.  The  burden  upon 
the  workers  and  the  evil  moral  influences  of  such  armaments 
were  only  less  than  the  burden  and  evil  of  war.  Of  all 
civilized  countries,  too,  only  England,  trusting  to  her  navy, 
and  the  United  States,  trusting  to  geography,  were  free 
from  the  more  crushing  burden  of  universal  military  service. 
Worst  of  all,  the  situation  in  itself  made  for  war.  In  every 
land,  thousands  of  ambitious  young  officers,  devoted  to 
their  calling,  could  not  escape  an  itch  to  try  out  their  pet  war 
machine  —  and  to  prove  for  themselves  an  excuse  for  being. 

II.  THE  BALKANS:    A  SEED  PLOT  FOR  WAR 

Here  were  heaped  materials  for  a  world  conflagration.  A 
fuse  was  found  in  the  Balkan  situation.  The  little  Balkan 
district  is  a  crumpled  criss-cross  of  interlacing  mountains 


690  HOW  THE  WAR  CAME 

and  valleys,  peopled  by  tangled  fragments  of  six  distinct 
and  mutually  antagonistic  peoples :  the  Turk,  long  en 
camped  as  a  conqueror  among  subject  Christian  populations, 
but  for  the  last  hundred  years  slowly  thrust  back  toward 
Constantinople;  the  Greeks,  mainly  in  the  southern  pen 
insula,  with  the  Albanians  just  to  the  north  along  the 
Adriatic;  the  Roumanians,  mainly  north  of  the  Danube; 
and,  between  Greece  and  Roumania,  the  Bulgarians  and 
Serbs.  The  "Bulgars"  (on  the  east,  toward  the  Black 
Sea)  came  into  the  peninsula  as  conquerors  from  Central 
Asia  in  the  eighth  century.  Originally  baggy-trousered 
nomads,  akin  to  Tartars,  they  have  become  essentially 
Slavic  in  blood  by  absorption  into  the  peoples  among  whom 
they  settled;  but  they  keep  a  ruinous  "patriotic"  pride  in 
their  ancient  history  as  a  race  of  conquerors.  The  Serbs 
are  the  most  direct  representatives  of  the  South  Slavs  who 
conquered  and  settled  the  Balkan  region  two  hundred  years 
before  the  appearance  of  the  Bulgars;  but  in  1910  their 
ancient  empire  was  still  in  fragments  from  accidents  of 
Turkish  rule.  Bosnia,  the  northwestern  part,  had  main 
tained  itself  against  the  conquering  Turk  longest,  and,  be 
coming  a  distinct  province  under  the  Turks,  had  never 
been  reunited  to  the  rest  of  Serbia.  The  lands  of  the  Croats 
and  Slovenes  were  reconquered  from  Turkey  by  Hungary 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  and  had  long  been  subject 
provinces  of  the  Austrian  Empire,  though  they  belonged  to 
Serbia  by  race,  language,  and  older  history.  And  in  the 
fastnesses  of  Montenegro  ("Black  Mountain")  dwelt  some 
two  hundred  thousand  half-savage  Serbs  who  had  never 
yielded  to  the  Turk  but  had  kept  their  independence  at  the 
expense  of  "five  hundred  years  of  ferocious  heroism." 

About  a  century  ago  the  rule  of  the  Turk  in  the  Balkans 
began  to  disintegrate.  Greece  won  independence  in  an 
eight-year  war  (1821-1828)  ;  and  Roumania  and  Serbia 
were  advanced  to  the  position  of  merely  tributary  states, 
ruled  thenceforth  by  their  own  princes.  The  Crimean  War 
(1856),  in  which  France  and  England  attacked  Russia, 
bolstered  up  the  tottering  Ottoman  Empire  for  a  time,  but  a 


THE  BALKAN  SEED  PLOT  691 

great  collapse  came  twenty  years  later.  The  Sultan  had 
promised  many  reforms  for  his  Christian  subjects ;  but  these 
promises  bore  no  fruit,  and  in  1875-1876  the  Bosnians  and 
Bulgarians  rose  for  independence.  There  followed  the  horri 
ble  events  long  known  as  the  "Bulgarian  Atrocities." 
Turkish  soldiers  destroyed  a  hundred  Bulgarian  villages 
with  every  form  of  devilish  torture  imaginable,  and  massa 
cred  30,000  people,  carrying  off  also  thousands  of  Christian 
girls  into  terrible  slavery.  Then  Serbia  sprang  to  arms ; 
and  Tsar  Alexander  II  of  Russia  declared  war  on  Russo_ 
Turkey.  The  horror  in  Western  Europe  at  the  Turkish 
crimes  of  the  Turk  prevented  for  a  time  any  War 
interference ;  and  in  ten  months  the  Russian  armies  held  the 
Turks  at  their  mercy.  The  Peace  of  San  Stefano  (1878) 
arranged  for  a  group  of  free  Slav  states  in  the  peninsula  and 
for  the  exclusion  of  Turkey  from  Europe  except  for  the  city 
of  Constantinople. 

Alexander  would  probably  have  kept  on  to  secure  Con 
stantinople,  had  he  not  seen  a  growing  danger  of  European 
interference.     And  even  now  Europe  did   inter-  congress 
vene.     Austria  wanted  a  share  of  Balkan  plunder ;  of  Berlin, 
England  feared  the  advance  of  Russia  toward  her  187 
communications  with  India ;  and  so  the  Peace  of  San  Stefano 
was  torn  up.     The  Congress  of  Berlin  (1878),  dominated  by 
Disraeli,  the  English  Conservative,  restored  half  the  freed 
Christian  populations  to  their  old  slavery  under  the  Turk ; 
handed  over  Bosnia  to  Austria  to  "administer"  for  Turkey, 
with  a  solemn  provision  that  Austria  should  never  annex  the 
territory  to   her    own   realms ;    and  left  the  whole  Balkan 
district  in  anarchy  for  a  third  of  a  century  more.      (See 
map,  p.  694.)      In  fixing  responsibility  for  the  World  War 
of  1914,  this  crime  of  1878  cannot  be  overlooked. 

It  is  only  fair  to  note  that  while  the  English  government 
was  chiefly  responsible  for  that  crime,  the  English  people 
promptly  repudiated  it  at  the  polls.  Gladstone  came 
forth  from  retirement  to  stump  England  against  the  "shame 
ful  alliance  with  Abdul  the  Assassin"  ;  and  at  the  next  elec 
tions  (1880),  Disraeli  was  overthrown  by  huge  majorities. 


692  HOW  THE  WAR  CAME 

The  wrong  to  the  Balkans  could  not  then  be  undone,  but 
from  this  time  England  drew  away  from  her  old  policy  of 
courting  Turkish  friendship  —  wherein  her  place  was  quickly 
taken  by  Germany. 

No  part  of  her  non-European  empire  interested  German 
ambition  so  deeply  as  her  advance  into  Asia  Minor.  This 
Germany  in  began  in  earnest  about  1900.  Germany  did  not 
Asia  Minor  acquire  actual  title  to  territory  there ;  but  she  did 
secure  from  Turkey  various  rich  "concessions,"  guarantee 
ing  her  for  long  periods  the  sole  right  to  build  and  operate 
great  railroads  and  to  develop  valuable  mining  and  oil 
properties;  and  this  "economic  penetration"  she  intended 
confidently  to  turn  into  political  sovereignty. 

To  obtain  such  concessions,  Germany  had  sought  the 
Turk's  favor  in  shameful  ways.  She  loaned  to  the  Sultan 
German  officers  to  reorganize  and  drill  the  Turkish  armies, 
and  supplied  him  with  the  most  modern  arms  to  keep  down 
the  rising  Christian  natives  under  his  yoke  —  as  in  the  Turk 
ish  war  with  Greece  for  Crete  in  1897.  And  in  1895  when 
new  Armenian  massacres  had  roused  England  (precisely  as 
Spanish  massacres  in  Cuba  some  two  years  later  aroused  the 
United  States)  so  that  great  public  meetings  were  calling 
for  war  upon  Turkey,  Kaiser  Wilhelm  sent  to  the  Sultan 
his  photograph  and  that  of  his  wife,  as  a  pledge  of  German 
friendship  and  support. 

The  prospect  of  German  dominance  in  Asia  Minor  brought 
Germany  and  Austria  into  closer  sympathy  in  their  Balkan 
policies.  Austria's  interference  in  those  regions 
anTlus-  had  been  purely  bad,  aiming  to  keep  the  little 
trian  plans  Balkan  states  weak  and  mutually  hostile,  and 
especially  to  prevent  the  growth  of  a  "Greater 
Serbia."  Now  (1898,  1899),  Germany  obtained  concessions 
from  Turkey  for  a  railway  from  "Berlin  to  Bagdad,"  to  open 
up  the  fabulously  rich  Oriental  trade.  A  powerful  Serbia, 
through  which  that  line  must  pass,  might  have  hampered 
the  project.  Thenceforward  Germany  was  ready  to  back 
Austria  unreservedly  in  Balkan  aggression.  And  in  return, 


THE  BALKAN  SEED  PLOT  693 

Austria  permitted  herself  to   sink  virtually  into   a  vassal 
state  of  Germany  in  all  other  foreign  relations.     Such  was 
the  origin  of  the  German  dream  of  a  "Mittel-  The 
Europa"   empire,   reaching   across   Europe   from  « Middie- 
the  North  Sea  to  the  Aegean  and  the  Black  seas, 
and  on  through  Asia  Minor  to  the  Euphrates. 

In  1908  came  a  step  toward  fulfilling  the  plan.  Taking  ad 
vantage  of  internal  dissensions  in  Turkey,  Austria  formally 
annexed  Bosnia,  in  flat  contradiction  to  her  solemn 
pledges.  This  was  not  only  a  brutal  stroke  at  annexes 
the  sanctity  of  treaties,  but  it  seemed  also  a  fatal 
blow  to  any  hope  for  a  reunion  of  that  Slav  dis 
trict  with  Serbia.  Serbia  protested  earnestly,  and  was 
supported  by  Russia.  But  the  Kaiser  "took  his  stand  in 
shining  armor  by  the  side  of  his  ally,"  as  he  himself  put  it; 
and  Russia,  still  weak  from  her  defeat  by  Japan  and  from 
her  revolution  of  1906,  had  to  back  down.  Serbia  was 
then  forced  by  Austria's  rough  threats  to  make  humiliating 
apologies ;  but  a  network  of  secret  societies  at  once  grew 
up  in  Serbia  pledged  to  hostility  to  the  "odious  and  greedy 
northern  neighbor  who  holds  millions  of  Serb  brothers  in 
chains." 

Then  came  an    event    less    favorable    to    the    Teutonic 
designs.      United   action   by   the   mutually   hostile   Balkan 
states  had  seemed  impossible.     But  in  1912,  Bui-  Balkan 
garia,  Serbia,  Montenegro,  and  Greece  suddenly  Wars  of 
joined  in  a  war  to  drive  the  Turk  out  of  Europe.  1912>  1{ 
Serbia  was  to  have  northern  Albania,  with  its  seaports ; 
Montenegro,  the  port  of  Scutari ;   Greece,  southern  Albania 
and  a  small  strip  of  Macedonian  coast;    and  Bulgaria  the 
bulk  of  Macedonia. 

The  allies  won  swift  victories,  and  in  a  few  months  were 
almost  at  the  gates  of  Constantinople.  "Europe"  inter 
vened  to  arrange  the  peace  terms.  Italy,  like  Austria,  was 
hostile  to  a  Greater  Serbia;  and  at  the  insistence  of  these 
powers,  backed  by  Germany,  a  new  Kingdom  of  Albania  was 
created,  shutting  off  Serbia  once  more  from  the  sea  she  had 


694 


HOW  THE  WAR  CAME 


reached,  while  Montenegro  was  forced,  by  threat  of  war,  to 
give  up  to  Albania  Scutari,  which  she  had  conquered.  Tur 
key  was  to  surrender,  mostly  to  Bulgaria,  her  remaining  terri 
tory  in  Europe  except  for  Constantinople.  Germany  had 
carried  her  points  in  this  settlement ;  but  her  ally,  Turkey, 
had  collapsed,  and  events  were  at  once  to  show  that  in  siding 
with  Bulgaria  she  had  "put  her  money  on  the  wrong  horse." 


-.  ; 

(•(Budapest 


20°   Longitude      East       from 


1912 


1913 


THE  BALKAN  STATES. 


The  treaty  left  Bulgaria  almost  the  only  gainer.  The 
cheated  allies  demanded  that  she  now  share  her  gains  with 
them.  She  refused  ;  and  at  once  (June,  1913)  followed  "the 
Second  Balkan  War."  Greece,  Serbia,  Montenegro,  and 
Roumania  attacked  Bulgaria.  The  Turks  seized  the  chance 
to  reoccupy  Adrianople,  and  were  permitted  to  keep  it.  In 
a  month  Bulgaria  was  crushed,  and  a  new  division  of  booty 
was  arranged.  Greece  won  the  richest  prize,  including  the 
city  of  Saloniki ;  but  each  of  the  other  allies  secured  gains. 

The  primitive  Balkan  peoples  now  hated  one  another 


GERMANY  WILLS  IT  695 

with  an  intensified  ferocity.  Especially  did  Bulgar  now 
hate  Serb  and  Greek.  Serbia,  too,  was  still  cheated  of  her 
proper  desire  for  an  outlet  on  the  Adriatic,  her  only  natural 
gateway  to  the  outside  world,  and  she  resented  fiercely  the 
Austrian  and  Italian  policy  which  had  so  balked  her  — 
especially  as  Austria  now  shut  out  all  her  pork,  and  so  made 
valueless  her  droves  of  pigs,  her  only  form  of  wealth. 
Austria  felt  deeply  humiliated  by  the  outcome  of  the 
Second  Balkan  War,  and  was  planning  to  redress  her  loss  of 
prestige  by  striking  Serbia  savagely  on  the  first  occasion. 
There  followed  in  1913  a  new  and  ominous  stride  in 
militarism.  First  Germany  adopted  a  new  army  bill,  to  in 
crease  her  army  in  peace  from  650,000  to  870,000.  Three 
weeks  later  (July  20)  France  raised  her  term  of  active 
service  from  two  years  to  three,  and  Austria  and  Russia  at 
once  took  like  measures.  Prince  Lichnowsky,  German  am 
bassador  at  London,  has  told  us  that  only  England's  honest 
desire  for  peace,  and  her  coaxing  Montenegro  and  Serbia 
into  submission  at  the  close  of  the  First  Balkan  War,  pre 
vented  a  world  war  then.  A  year  later,  England's  efforts 
to  a  like  end  failed. 


III.   GERMANY   WILLS   THE  WAR 

One  reason  why  the  world  drifted  so  complacently  toward 
catastrophe  was  the  general  belief  (outside  diplomatic  and 
military  circles  anyway)  that,  despite  their  armaments,  the 
great  "Christian"  states  were  too  good  or  at  least  too  wise 
ever  again  to  engage  in  war  with  one  another  merely  for 
plunder  —  with  the  terrible  ruin  that  such  war  must  bring 
under  modern  conditions.  And  this  belief  was  in  itself  a 
safeguard,  in  a  measure.  The  catastrophe  would  at  least 
have  been  postponed,  except  that  one  great  nation  did  not 
share  the  faith  in  peace,  or  the  desire  for  it.  The  willing 
hand  to  light  the  deadly  fuse  was  Germany's. 

For  half  a  century  Germany  had  been  ruled  by  a 
Prussian  despotism  resting  upon  an  old  bigoted  and  arro 
gant  oligarchy  of  birth,  and  a  new,  greedy,  scheming 


696  HOW  THE  WAR  CAME 

oligarchy  of  money.  That  rule  had  conferred  on  Ger 
many  many  benefits.  It  had  cared  for  the  people  as  zeal- 
Prussian  ously  as  the  herdsman  cares  for  the  flocks  he  ex- 
miiitansm  pects  to  shear.  But  in  doing  so  it  had  amazingly 
transformed  the  old  peace-loving,  gentle  German  people. 
It  had  taught  that  docile  race  to  bow  to  Authority  rather 
than  to  Right ;  to  believe  Germany  stronger,  wiser,  better, 
than  "decaying"  England,  "decadent  and  licentious" 
France,  "uncouth and  anarchic"  Russia, or  "money-serving  " 
America ;  to  be  ready  to  accept  a  program,  at  the  word  of 
command,  for  imposing  German  Kultur  upon  the  rest  of  the 
world  by  force;  to  regard  war,  even  aggressive  war,  not  as 
horrible  and  sinful,  but  as  beautiful,  noble,  desirable,  and 
right,  —  the  final  measure  of  a  nation's  worth,  and  the 
divinely  appointed  means  for  saving  the  world  by  German 
conquest ;  and  finally  to  disregard  ordinary  morality, 
national  or  individual,  whenever  it  might  interfere  with  the 
victory  of  the  "Fatherland." 

"Out of  This    diseased    "patriotism"    began    with    the 

their  own      war-begotten   Empire.     As    early   as    1872,    Von 

Schellendorf,  Prussian  War-Minister,  wrote  :  - 
"Do  not  forget  the  civilizing  task  which  Providence  assigns 
us.  Just  as  Prussia  was  destined  to  be  the  nucleus  of  Ger 
many,  so  the  new  Germany  shall  be  the  nucleus  of  a  future 
Empire  of  the  West.  .  .  .  We  will  successively  annex  Den 
mark,  Holland,  Belgium,  .  .  .  and  finally  northern  France. 
.  .  .  No  coalition  in  the  world  can  stop  us."  Leaders 
of  German  thought  adopted  this  tone,  until  it  dominated 
pulpit,  press,  university,  and  all  society.  Treitschke,  a 
leading  historian,  could  teach  impiously  :  "War  is  part  of 
the  divinely  appointed  order.  .  .  .  War  is  both  justifiable 
and  moral,  and  the  idea  of  perpetual  peace  is  both  impossi 
ble  and  immoral.  .  .  .  The  salvation  of  Germany  can  be 
attained  only  by  the  annihilation  of  the  smaller  states." 
And  the  philosopher  Nietzsche  exclaimed  with  a  sort  of 
ecstasy :  "Ye  shall  love  peace  as  a  means  to  new  wars,  and 
the  short  peace  better  than  the  long.  .  .  .  You  say  a  good 
cause  hallows  even  war ;  but  I  tell  you  a  good  war  hallows 


GERMANY  WILLS  IT  697 

every  cause"  The  Kaiser  had  long  been  a  convert  to 
this  evil  doctrine,  and  one  of  its  noisiest  preachers.  Said  he 
(at  Bremen,  March  22,  1900),  — "We  are  the  salt  of  the 
earth.  .  .  .  God  has  called  us  to  civilize  the  world.  .  .  .  We 
are  the  missionaries  of  human  progress."  And  the  Crown 
Prince  added  this  interesting  interpretation:  "It  is  only 
by  trust  in  our  good  sword  that  we  shall  be  able  to  main 
tain  that  place  in  the  sun  which  belongs  to  us."  Ger 
man  school  children  had  these  doctrines  drilled  into  them. 
Said  one  school  manual  (School  and  Fatherland,  1913) : 
"  Germany's  mission  is  to  rejuvenate  exhausted  Europe  by 
a  diffusion  of  Germanic  blood."  And  Jung  Deutschland, 
official  organ  of  the  Young  German  League  (an  organization 
corresponding  in  a  rough  way  to  our  Boy  Scouts),  explained 
more  specifically  :  "  War  is  the  noblest  and  holiest  expression 
of  human  activity.  For  us,  too,  the  glad,  great  hour  of  battle 
will  strike.  Still  and  deep  in  the  German  heart  must  live  the 
joy  of  battle  and  the  longing  for  it.  Let  us  ridicule  to  the 
utmost  the  old  women  in  breeches  who  fear  war  and  deplore 
it  as  cruel  and  revolting.  No ;  war  is  beautiful.  Its  august 
sublimity  elevates  the  human  heart  beyond  the  earthly 
and  the  common.  In  the  cloud  palace  above  sit  the  heroes 
Frederick  the  Great  and  Blucher ;  and  all  the  men  of  action 
-  the  great  Emperor,  Moltke,  Roon,  Bismarck  —  are  there 
as  well,  but  not  the  old  women  who  would  take  away  our 
joy  in  war.  .  .  .  That  is  the  heaven  of  young  Germany." 

And  so  on  almost  without  end.  It  is  no  pleasant 
task  now  to  recall  this  monstrous  ritual  chanted  so 
universally  by  the  makers  of  opinion  in  a  great  nation 
in  praise  of  international  envy  and  suspicion  and  war. 
Nor  is  it  recalled  here  to  add  any  discredit  to  the 
new  Germany  struggling  toward  a  better  life.  But  the 
story  carries  a  lesson  that  the  world  should  never  forget  — 
a  lesson  less  now  for  Germany  than  for  her  conquerors, 
"  lest  they  forget " ;  lest,  in  the  rebound  from  the  world 
struggle,  they  bow  down  in  a  worship  of  violence  before 
some  similar  misshapen  image  of  nationalism. 


698  HOW  THE  WAR  CAME 

True,  in  that  old  Germany,  a  few  lonely  voices,  like 
Ottfried  Nippold,  protested  against  this  doctrine  of  insolent 
Protests  and  ruthless  Might,  and  the  Socialists  of  course 
few  and  offered  a  vain  opposition.  Indeed  the  bulk  of 
the  peasants  and  artisans  wished  not  war  but 
peace;  but  these  were  silent  social  forces,  unorganized, 
passive,  and  defenseless.  And  even  these  elements  were 
deeply  influenced  by  the  persistent  propaganda  that 
England  hated  their  country  and  was  only  waiting 
a  chance  to  destroy  it.  Between  1912  and  1914,  to  be 
sure,  the  German  ambassador  to  England,  Prince  Lich- 
nowsky,1  repeatedly  assured  his  government  of  England's 
friendly  and  pacific  feeling.  But  these  communications, 
so  out  of  tune  with  the  purpose  of  the  German  government, 
never  reached  the  German  people. 

As  Bismarck  prepared  his  "Trilogy  of  Wars"  thirty  years 
before,  of  which  he  boasted  so  insolently,  in  order  to  make 
Preparation  Prussia  mistress  of  Germany,  so  after  1890,  even 
for  war  more  deliberately,  Kaiser  Wilhelm  and  his  advisers 
prepared  vaster  war  to  make  Germany  mistress  of  the  world. 
They  hoarded  gold  in  the  war  chest;  heaped  up  arms  and 
munitions,  and  huge  stocks  of  raw  materials,  to  manufacture 
more;  secretly  tried  out  new  military  inventions  on  a  vast 
scale, — submarines,  zeppelins,  poison  gases,  new  explosives ; 
created  a  navy  in  a  race  to  best  England's ;  bound  other 
ruling  houses  to  their  own  by  marriage  or  by  placing  Hohen- 
zollerns  directly  on  the  throne  —  in  Russia,  Greece,  Bul 
garia,  Roumania ;  reorganized  the  Turkish  Empire  and 
filled  offices  in  the  army  and  navy  there  with  Germans  ;  per 
meated  every  great  country,  in  the  Old  World  and  the  New, 
with  an  insidious  and  treacherous  system  of  spies  in  the 

1  This  cultivated  and  able  German  Liberal,  wholly  free  from  the  spirit  of  German 
jingoism,  had  been  selected  for  the  position  apparently  in  order  to  blind  English 
opinion  as  to  Germany's  warlike  aims.  When  the  war  came,  he  found  himself  in 
disgrace  with  the  Kaiser  and  the  German  court ;  and  at  the  opening  of  the  second 
year  of  the  war  (August,  1916)  he  wrote  an  account  of  his  London  mission  for 
private  circulation  among  his  friends,  to  justify  himself  in  their  eyes.  A  copy  fell 
into  the  hands  of  the  Allies  during  the  next  year,  and  became  at  once  one  of  the  most 
valuable  proofs  of  the  German  guilt  in  forcing  on  the  war. 


GERMANY  WILLS  IT  699 

guise  of  friendly  business  shielded  by  innocent  hospitality ; 
secured  control  of  banking  syndicates  and  of  newspapers  in 
foreign  lands,  especially  in  Italy  and  America,  so  as  to  in 
fluence  public  opinion ;  and  built  military  railroads  converg 
ing  upon  the  boundary  of  Belgium. 

In  June,  1914,  the  Kiel  Canal  from  the  Baltic  to  the  North 
Sea  was  finally  opened  to  the  passage  of  the  largest  ships  of 
war.  Now  Germany  was  ready,  and  her  war  lords  were 
growing  anxious  to  use  their  preparation  before  it  grew  stale 
—  and  before  France  and  Russia  should  have  time  to  put 
into  effect  the  new  army  laws  they  had  been  terrified  into 
adopting  (page  695) .  Moreover,  war,  better  than  anything 
else,  would  quiet  the  rising  feeling  in  Germany,  especially 
among  the  Socialists,  against  militarism.  Another  set  of 
circumstances  made  the  moment  a  happy  one  for  what 
the  German  phrase-makers  had  begun  to  call  a  "  preventive 
war  "  :  Russia  was  distracted  by  violent  strikes  of  working- 
men  in  her  cities ;  France  by  a  tumultuous  resistance  to  her 
new  army  law;  and  England,  by  an  embryo  civil  war  in 
Ireland.  Germany,  we  know  now,  had  seriously  considered 
precipitating  war  on  several  previous  occasions  connected 
with  colonial  questions  in  Africa ;  but  her  leaders  prudently 
preferred  a  first  war  in  which  England  would  not  be  likely 
to  join,  so  that  the  Teutonic  empires  might  have  only  France 
and  Russia  to  deal  with  at  one  time.  In  the  Balkans, 
England  had  shown  no  selfish  interest  for  many  years,  and 
it  was  easy  to  believe  that  she  would  not  fight  upon  a 
Balkan  question. 

And  at  this  instant  came  just  the  occasion  the  German 
war  lords  wished.     Ever  since  its  unjust  seizure  by  Austria 
(page  693),  Bosnia  had  been  seething  with  con-  The  occa_ 
spiracies  against  Austrian  rule.     June  28,  1914,  sum  in  the 
the   heir   to   the  Austrian  throne,  the  Archduke  Balkan 
Francis,  and  his  wife,  were  assassinated  while  in  Bosnia  by 
such  conspirators.     Austrian  papers  loudly  declared  Serbia 
responsible,  but  a  month  passed  quietly  before  the  Austrian 
government  took  open  action.     That  month,  however,  was 
used  in  secret  preparation  by  Germany.     July  5  there  was 


700  HOW  THE  WAR  CAME 

held  at  Potsdam  a  secret  conference  of  military  authorities, 
bankers,  and  manufacturers  of  munitions ;  and  a  war 
program  was  decided  upon.  Then  July  23,  without  warn 
ing,  Austria  launched  her  forty-eight  hour  ultimatum  to 
Serbia  —  demands  that  would  have  degraded  that  country 
into  a  mere  vassal  state,  and  which,  the  minutes  of  the 
Austrian  Cabinet  show,  were  purposely  made  impossible  of 
acceptance.  The  German  government  supported  Austria  to 
the  hilt,  as  the  Kaiser  had  promised  beforehand  to  do ;  and 
in  twelve  days  a  world-conflagration  was  ablaze. 

It  is  not  needful  to  retell  here  the  complicated  story  of 
those  twelve  days.  Two  facts  of  supreme  significance  are 
established : 

1.  England  made  extreme  efforts  to  get  concessions  from 
Serbia,  in  the  interests  of  peace,  and  when  that  little  country 

did  make  submission  more  humble  than  could 
efforts  to  have  been  expected  (reserving  only  her  national 
keep  the  independence),  England  repeatedly  asked  Ger 
many  to  help  get  Austria's  acceptance  of  the 
terms,  or  at  least  her  consent  to  arbitrate  the  remaining 
points.  Failing  this,  England  pled,  in  vain,  that  Ger 
many  herself  should  suggest  some  plan  to  preserve  peace. 
Lichnowsky  believed  that  if  his  country  had  wished  peace,  a 
settlement  could  easily  have  been  secured,  and  he  "strongly 
backed"  the  English  proposals  ;  but  in  vain.  "We  insisted 
on  war,"  he  says  in  his  account  to  his  friends ;  "the  impres 
sion  grew  that  we  wanted  war  under  any  circumstances. 
It  was  impossible  to  interpret  our  attitude  in  any  other 
way."  And  again,  "I  had  to  support  in  London  a  policy 
the  wickedness  of  which  I  recognized.  That  brought  down 
vengeance  upon  me,  because  it  was  a  sin  against  the  Holy 
Ghost." 

2.  The  German  government,  which  all  along  had  secretly 
pulled    the    strings,   now   forced    on   the  war   (even    when 
Germany       Austria  for  a  moment  showed   hesitation)    by  a 
wills  war       series  of  insulting  ultimatums  to  Russia,  France, 
and  Belgium,  each  justified  to  the  German  people  by  glaring 


GERMANY  WILLS  IT  701 

falsehood.  August  3,  German  troops  invaded  Belgium,  as 
the  easy  road  to  Paris,  despite  the  most  solemn  treaty 
obligations  to  respect  the  neutrality  of  that  land.  And  the 
same  day  England  "went  in,"  as  she  had  distinctly  told 
Germany  she  would  do  if  Belgium  were  attacked. 

This  sadly  upset  German  calculations.  Chancellor  Beth- 
mann-Hollweg  had  believed  that  "shop-keeping"  England 
would  refuse  to  fight,  and  he  expressed  bitterly  to  the  Eng 
lish  ambassador  his  amazement  that  England  should  enter 
the  war  "just  for  a  scrap  of  paper."  The  German  govern 
ment  had  blundered,  and  the  irritating  consciousness  of  a 
blunder  called  forth  a  frenzy  of  hate  against  England  - 
whose  overthrow  in  a  later  war,  it  was  now  openly  avowed, 
was  the  real  German  goal.  "May  God  blast  England"  be 
came  the  daily  greeting  among  the  German  people. 

But,  after  all,  Germany  was  prepared  for  war  "to  the  last 
shoe-lace,"  and  her  opponents  were  unprepared.  Least  of  all 
was  England  ready.  She  had  no  army  worth  men- 
tioning — only  a  few  distant  and  scattered  garrisons ; 
and,  worse  still,  she  had  no  arms  for  her  eager  volunteers  and 
no  factories  worth  mention  to  make  munitions.  Both  parties 
declared  they  fought  to  establish  peace.  But  German 
leaders  made  it  plain  that  they  looked  only  to  a  sort  of  peace 
by  slavery,  —  a  peace  won  by  making  Germany  so  supreme 
in  the  world  that  no  other  power  could  possibly  dream  of 
withstanding  or  disobeying  her.  Said  Chancellor  Bethmann- 
Hollweg  (May  28,  1915)  :  "We  must  endure  till  we  have 
gained  every  possible  guarantee,  so  that  none  of  our  enemies 
-  not  alone,  not  united  —  will  again  dare  a  trial  of  strength 
with  us."  Over  against  this  ideal  of  a  Roman  peace,  Eng 
lish  statesmen  set  up  the  ideal  of  a  peace  of  righteousness. 
Said  Sir  Edward  Grey,  the  English  Foreign  Minister;  — 
"What  we  and  our  allies  are  fighting  for  is  a  free  Europe. 
We  want  a  Europe  free,  not  only  from  the  domination  of  one 
nationality  by  another,  but  from  hectoring  diplomacy  and 
the  peril  of  war,  free  from  the  constant  rattling  of  the  sword 
in  the  scabbard,  from  perpetual  talk  of  shining  armor  and 
war  lords.  We  are  fighting  for  equal  rights ;  for  law,  justice, 


702  HOW  THE  WAR  CAME 

peace ;  for  civilization  throughout  the  world  as  against  brute 
force." 

And,  with  full  allowance  for  rhetoric  and  for  misrepre 
sentation,  the  difference  was  a  real  one.  Even  in  England, 
to  be  sure,  there  had  not  been  wanting  in  past  years  an 
occasional  statesman  or  military  leader  to  suggest,  in 
private,  a  treacherous  attack  upon  Germany's  fleet  before 
it  should  grow  too  strong;  and  at  times  Russian  and 
French  statesmen  had  plotted  for  war.  But  in  England 
and  France  any  voice  lifted  openly  for  offensive  war  was 
drowned  instantly  in  storms  of  indignant  rebuke :  Germany, 
on  the  other  hand,  led  by  its  war-besotted  prophets,  had 
been  making  ready  zealously  for  wars  of  greed. 


CHAPTER  XLIV 

AMERICA   AND    THE   WAR 

IT  is  not  the  place  of  this  volume  to  tell  the  story  of  the 
war  further  than  needful  to  explain  America's  part  in  it. 
The  Germans  had  planned  a  short  war.  They  expected 
(1)  to  go  through  Belgium  swiftly  with  little  opposition,  and 
to  take  Paris  within  four  weeks ;  (2)  then  to  swing  their 
strength  against  Russia  before  that  unwieldy  power  could  get 
into  the  war  effectively,  and  crush  her;  and  (3),  with  the 
Channel  forts  at  command,  to  bring  England  easily  to  her 
knees,  if  she  should  really  take  part. 

Thanks  to  Belgium,  the  first  of  these  expectations  fell 
through  —  and  the  others  fell  with  it.  The  Germans  had 
allowed  six  days  to  march  through  Belgium.  But  for  sixteen 
days  little  Belgium  held  back  mighty  Germany.  When 
the  French  began  mobilization,  after  August  2,  they  began 
it  to  meet  an  honest  attack  through  Lorraine ;  but  before  the 
Belgians  were  quite  crushed,  the  French  contrived  to  shift 
enough  force  to  the  north  so  that,  along  with  a  poorly 
equipped  "Expeditionary  Army"  of  100,000  from  England, 
they  managed  to  delay  the  advance  through  northern  France 
for  three  weeks  more  —  ground  for  which  the  Germans 
had  allowed  eight  days.  Tremendously  outnumbered, 
outflanked,  trampled  into  the  dust  in  a  ceaseless  series  of 
desperate  battles,  the  thin  lines  of  Allied  survivors  fell  back 
doggedly  toward  the  Marne.  There  September  6,  Battle  of 
when  the  boastful  invaders  were  in  sight  of  the  the  Marne 
towers  of  Paris,  only  20  miles  away,  the  French  and  English 
turned  at  bay  in  a  colossal  battle  along  a  two-hundred  mile 
front.  The  Battle  of  the  Marne  wrecked  the  German  plan. 
To  save  themselves  from  destruction  the  invaders  then 

703 


704  AMERICA  AND  THE  WAR 

retreated  hastily  to  the  line  of  the  Aisne,  whence  the 
exhausted  Allies  failed  to  dislodge  them.  Both  sides 
"dug  in,"  along  a  360-mile  front  from  Switzerland  to  the 
North  Sea.  Then  began  a  trench  warfare,  new  in  history. 
The  positions  stabilized,  and,  on  the  whole,  in  spite  of 
repeated  and  horrible  slaughter,  were  not  materially 
changed  until  the  final  months  four  years  later. 

While  England's  first  heroic  army  died  devotedly  to 
gain  their  country  time,  England  reorganized  herself  for 
England's  war,  and  eventually  put  into  the  field  a  splendid 
sea  power  fighting  force  of  six  million  men  —  a  million 
ready  for  the  second  year.  From  the  first,  too,  England's 
superb  navy  swept  the  seas,  keeping  the  boastful  German 
dreadnaughts  bottled  up  in  the  South  Baltic,  and 
gradually  running  down  the  few  German  raiders  that  at 
first  escaped  to  prey  on  English  commerce.  Except  for 
the  English  navy,  Germany  must  have  won  the  war  before 
the  end  of  the  second  summer.  England  did  not  enforce  her 
blockade  of  Germany  rigidly,  in  the  first  months,  for  fear 
of  offending  unsettled  opinion  in  America ;  but  America's 
resources  in  food  and  munitions  were  for  the  most  part 
closed  to  Germany,  and  were  kept  fully  available  for  the 
Allies. 

Meantime,  the  war  was  spreading.  Within  the  first 
few  weeks,  England's  distant  daughter-commonwealths — • 
A  "World  Canada,  Australia,  New  Zealand,  South  Africa, 
War  and  even  her  subject  India  —  were  rousing  them 

selves  nobly  to  defend  their  common  civilization.  Japan, 
England's  ally  in  the  Orient,  entered  the  war,  too,  to 
seize  Germany's  holdings  in  China  and  in  the  northern 
Pacific.  Turkey  had  openly  joined  the  Teutonic  powers ; 
and,  in  the  second  autumn,  Bulgaria  did  so,  hoping  to 
wreak  vengeance  on  Serbia  for  1913  and  to  make  herself 
the  dominant  Balkan  state.  In  the  spring  of  that  same 
year,  after  driving  a  hard  bargain  for  territory  with  the 
Allies  in  a  secret  Pact  of  London,  Italy  broke  away 
from  the  Triple  Alliance  and  declared  war  on  Austria. 


THE  YEARS  1914,  1915  705 

On  the  whole,  however,  the  close  of  the  first  two  years 
saw  great  gains  for  Germany.     The  Russian  armies,  after 
gallant  fighting,  betrayed  by  generals  in  the  field  German 
and   by   a   traitorous    pro-German   war  office   at  success  in 
home,  had  suffered  absolutely  indescribable  losses ;  the  ^si 
and  Serbia,  after  heroic  resistance,  had  been  wiped 
from  the  map.      Germany  now  dominated  a  solid  broad  belt 
of  territory  from  Berlin  and  Brussels  and  Warsaw  to  Bag 
dad  and  Persia,  map,  page  725.     True,  she  began  to  feel  terri 
bly  the  blockade  of  the  English  navy.     Her  stocks  of  fats, 
rubber,    cotton,    and    copper   were   running   low,    and   her 
poorer  classes  were  suffering  from  undernourishment  —  as 
was  shown  by  a  horrible  increase  in  the  infant  death  rate. 
But  the  ruling  classes  felt  no  pinch,  and  looked  hopefully 
now  to  the  domination  of  the  East  to  retrieve  the  markets. 

From  the  first  the  warfare  in  the  field  was  marked 
by  new  and  ever  more  terrible  ways  of  fighting,  with 
increasing  ferocity  and  horror  from  month  to  New 
month.  Ordinary  cannon  were  replaced  by  methods  of 
huge  new  guns  whose  high  explosives  blasted  * 
the  whole  landscape  into  indescribable  and  irretrievable 
ruin  —  burying  whole  battalions  alive,  and  forming  great 
craters  where  snipers  found  the  best  shelter  in  future 
advances.  Ordinary  defense  works  were  elaborated  into 
many  lines  of  connected  trenches  beneath  the  earth, 
protected  by  mazy  entanglements  of  barbed  wire  and 
strengthened  at  intervals  by  bomb-proof  "dugouts"  and 
underground  chambers  of  heavy  timbers  and  cement.  To 
plow  through  these  intrenchments,  cavalry  gave  way  to  mon 
strous,  heavily  armored  motor-tanks.  New  guns  belched 
deadly  poison  gases,  slaying  whole  regiments  in  horrible  stran 
gling  torture  when  the  Germans  first  used  this  devilish  device, 
and  infernal  "flame-throwers"  wrapped  whole  ranks  in 
liquid  fire.  Scouting  was  done,  and  gunfire  directed,  by  air 
planes  equipped  with  new  apparatus  for  wireless  telegraphy 
and  for  photography ;  and  daily  these  aerial  scouts,  singly  or 
in  fleets,  met  in  deadly  combat  ten  thousand  feet  above  the 


706  AMERICA  AND  THE  WAR 

ground,  —  combat  that  ended  only  when  one  or  both  went 
hurtling  down  in  flames  to  crashing  destruction.  Worse  than 
these  terrors  even,  the  soldiers  dreaded  the  beastly  filthiness 
of  trench  war :  the  never  absent  smell  of  rotting  human  flesh  ; 
the  torture  of  vermin ;  the  dreary  monotony. 

One  other  phase  of  the  war  compelled  from  the  first 
the  attention  of  the  world  even  outside  Europe.  This 
German  was  tne  policy  of  "  Frightf ulness "  deliberately 
"Fright-  adopted  by  the  German  High  Command.  For 
centuries,  international  law  had  been  building 
up  rules  of  "civilized"  war,  to  protect  non-combatants 
and  to  try  to  preserve  some  shreds  of  humanity  even 
among  the  fighters.  But  the  military  rulers  of  Germany, 
in  official  war  manuals,  had  for  years  referred  to  such 
"  moderation  "  as  "  flabby  sentimentality,"  —  and  indeed  they 
had  already  given  to  the  world  one  remarkable  practical 
application  of  their  own  doctrine.  In  1900  a  force  of  Ger 
man  soldiers  set  out  to  join  forces  from  other  European 
countries  and  from  the  United  States  in  restoring  order 
in  China,  after  the  massacre  of  Europeans  there  in  the 
Boxer  Rebellion.  July  27  the  Kaiser  bade  his  troops 
farewell  at  Bremerhaven  in  a  set  address.  In  the  course 
of  that  brutal  speech  he  commanded  them:  "Show  no 
mercy  !  Take  no  prisoners  !  As  the  Huns  made  a  name  for 
themselves  which  is  still  mighty  in  tradition,  so  may  you  by 
your  deeds  so  fix  the  name  of  German  in  China  that  no 
Chinese  shall  ever  again  dare  to  look  at  a  German  askance." 

At  the  opening  of  the  World  War,  this  "Hun"  policy  was 
put  into  effect  in  Western  Europe.  Belgium  and  north 
eastern  France  were  purposely  devastated.  Whole  villages 
of  innocent  non-combatants  were  wiped  out, — men, 
women,  children,  —  burned  in  their  houses  or  shot  and 
bayoneted  if  they  crept  forth.  All  this,  not  by  the  passionate 
fury  of  brutalized  soldiers,1  but  by  deliberate  order  of  polished 

1  It  is  a  relief  to  be  assured  by  an  excellent  authority  (Philip  Gibbs,  the  English 
war  correspondent,  in  his  recent,  Now  It  Can  Be  Told)  that  many  at  least  of  the 
stories  of  outrage  by  individual  German  soldiers,  widely  accepted  as  such  stories 
were  during  the  war,  are  without  basis  in  fact. 


ATTEMPT  AT  NEUTRALITY  707 

soft-living  "gentlemen,"  just  to  break  the  morale  of  the 
enemy,  to  make  it  easy  to  hold  conquered  territory  with 
small  forces,  and  to  intimidate  neighboring  small  peoples,  - 
Danes  and  Dutch.  So,  too,  German  airplanes  bombed 
hospitals  and  Red  Cross  trains,  assassinating  doctors  and 
nurses  along  with  the  wounded  soldiers ;  and  soon  the 
submarines  began  to  torpedo  hospital  ships,  clearly  marked 
as  such  (on  suspicion,  perhaps,  that  such  vessels  carried 
munitions).  No  wonder  that  even  neutral  lands  began  to 
know  the  German  no  longer  as  the  kindly  "Fritz"  but  only 
as  "Hun"  or  "Boche." 

To  the   United  States,  even    more    than    to    France    or 
England,    the    war    came    as    a    surprise;     and    for    some 
time  its  purposes   and   its   origin   were  obscured  America>s 
by  a  skillful  German  propaganda  in   our  press  ;(neutrai- 
and   on   the  platform.     President  Wilson   issued  lty 
the  usual  proclamation  of  neutrality,  and  followed  this  with 
unusual  and  solemn  appeals  to  the  American  people  for  a  real 
neutrality   of  feeling.     For   two   years   the   administration 
clung  to  this  policy.     Any  other  course  was  made  difficult  for 
the  President  by  the  fact  that  a  good  many  members  of 
Congress  were  either  pro-German,  or  at  least  bitterly  anti- 
English,    or    extreme    pacifists.     Moreover,   the    President 
seems  to  have  hoped  nobly  that  if  the  United  States  could 
keep  apart  from  the  struggle,  it  might,  at  the  close,  render 
mighty  service  establishing  lasting  world  peace. 

True,  the  best  informed  men  and  women  saw  at  once  that 
France  and  England  were  waging  America's  war  against  a 
militaristic  despotism.  Tens  of  thousands  of  young  Ameri 
cans,  largely  college  men,  made  their  way  to  the  fighting 
line,  as  volunteers  in  the  Canadian  regiments,  in  the  French 
"Foreign  Legion,"  or  in  the  "air  service";  and  hundreds 
of  thousands  more  blushed  with  shame  daily  that  other 
and  weaker  peoples  should  struggle  and  suffer  in  our  cause 
while  we  stood  idly  by.  But  to  millions  the  dominant 
feeling  was  a  deep  thankfulness  that  our  sons  were  safe 
from  slaughter,  our  homes  free  from  the  horror  of  war. 
Vast  portions  of  the  American  people  had  neither  cared 


708  AMERICA  AND  THE  WAR 

nor  known  about  the  facts  back  of  the  war :  to  such,  that 
mighty  struggle  was  merely  "a  bloody  European  squabble." 
It  was  not  altogether  easy  to  break  with  the  century-long 
tradition  of  a  happy  aloofness  from  all  Old- World  quarrels. 

Such  indifference  or  apathy,  however,  needed  a  moral 
force  to  give  it  positive  strength.  And  this  moral  force  for 
neutrality  was  not  wholly  lacking.  Many  ardent  workers, 
and  some  leaders,  in  all  the  great  reform  movements  believed 
that  in  any  war  the  attention  of  the  nation  must  be  diverted 
from  the  pressing  need  of  progress  at  home.  To  them  the 
first  American  gun  would  sound  the  knell,  for  their  day,  of  all 
the  reforms  that  they  had  long  battled  for.  Still  breathless 
from  their  lifelong  wrestlings  with  vested  wrongs,  they  failed 
to  see  that  German  militarism  and  despotism  had  suddenly 
towered  into  the  one  supreme  peril  to  American  life.  And 
so  many  noble  men,  and  some  honored  names,  cast  their 
weight  for  neutrality.  And  then,  cheek  by  jowl  with  this 
misled  but  honorable  idealism,  there  flaunted  itself  a  coarse 
pro-German  sentiment  wholly  un-American.  Sons  and 
grandsons  of  men  who  had  fled  from  Germany  to  escape 
despotism  were  heard  now  as  apologists  for  the  most  danger 
ous  despotism  and  the  most  barbarous  war  methods  the 
modern  world  had  ever  seen.  Organized  and  obedient  to  the 
word  of  command,  this  element  made  many  weak  politicians 
truckle  to  the  fear  of  "the  German  vote."  Unhappily, 
too,  we  have  always  with  us  those  who  blindly  hate  England. 

These  forces  for  neutrality  were  strengthened  by  one  other 
selfish  motive.  The  country  had  begun  to  feel  a  vast  busi 
ness  prosperity.  Some  forms  of  business  were  demoralized 
for  a  time;  but  soon  the  European  belligerents  were  all 
clamoring  to  buy  all  our  spare  products  at  our  own  prices,  - 
munitions  of  war,  food,  clothing,  raw  materials.  To  be  sure, 
the  English  navy  soon  shut  out  Germany  from  direct  trade, 
though  she  long  continued  an  eager  customer,  indirectly, 
through  Holland  and  Denmark ;  but  in  any  case  the  Allies 
called  ceaselessly  for  more  than  we  could  produce.  Non- 
employment  vanished  ;  wages  rose  by  bounds  ;  new  fortunes 
piled  up  as  by  Aladdin's  magic.  A  busy  people,  growing 


ATTEMPT  AT  NEUTRALITY  709 

richer  and  busier  day  by  day,  ill-informed  about  the  real 
causes  of  the  war,  needed  some  mighty  incentive  to  turn  it 
from  the  easy,  peaceful  road  of  prosperous  industry  into  the 
stern,  rugged  paths  of  self-denial  and  war — even  though 
certain  huge  financial  interests  may  secretly  have  intrigued 
for  war,  to  make  safer  their  investments  in  French  and 
English  bonds.  A  little  wisdom,  and  Germany  might 
readily  have  held  America  bound  to  neutrality  in  acts  at 
least,  if  not  always  in  feeling. 

But  more  and  more  Germany  made  neutrality  impossible. 
From  the  first  the  German  government  actively  stirred 
up  bad  feeling  toward  America  among  its  own 
people  because  Americans  used  the  usual  and  makes 
legal  rights  of  citizens  of  a  neutral  power  to  sell 
munitions  of  war  to  the  belligerents.  Germany 
had  securely  supplied  herself  in  advance,  and  England's 
navy  now  shut  her  out  from  the  trade  in  any  case. 
So  she  tried,  first  by  cajolery  and  then  by  threats,  to 
keep  Americans  from  selling  to  her  enemies  —  which 
would  have  left  them  at  her  mercy,  unprepared  as  they 
were.  The  legal  right  of  a  neutral  to  sell  muni-  sale  of 
tions  she  could  not  question.  She  demanded  of  mumtlons 
us  not  that  we  comply  with  international  law,  but  that  we 
change  it  in  such  a  way  as  to  insure  her  victory.  For  the 
American  government  to  have  forbidden  trade  in  munitions 
during  the  war,  would  have  been  not  neutrality,  but  a  direct 
and  deadly  act  of  war  against  the  Allies.  Worse  still,  it 
would  have  fastened  militarism  upon  the  world  directly. 
For  neutrals  to  renounce  trade  in  munitions  (until  all  such 
trade  is  controlled  by  a  world  federation)  would  be  at  once 
and  forever  to  hand  over  the  world  to  the  nation  with  the 
largest  armaments  and  munition  factories.  Very  properly 
the  American  government  refused  firmly  to  notice  these 
arrogant  demands. 

One  phase  of  German  frightfulness  came  home  especially 
to  America.  This  was  a  new  and  barbarous  submarine  war 
fare,  with  its  invasion  of  neutral  rights  and  murder  of 
neutral  lives.  U-craft  were  not  very  dangerous  to  war- 


710  AMERICA  AND  THE  WAR 

ships  when  such  vessels  were  on  their  guard.  Unarmed 
merchantmen  they  could  destroy  almost  at  will.  But 
if  a  U-boat  summoned  a  merchantman  to  sur- 
marine  and  render,  the  merchantman  might  possibly  sink  the 
merchant  submarine  by  one  shot  from  a  concealed  gun, 
and  in  any  case  the  U-boat  had  little  room  for 
prisoners.  Submarine  warfare  upon  merchant  ships  is  neces 
sarily  barbarous  and  in  conflict  with  all  the  principles  of  inter 
national  law.  If  it  is  to  be  efficient,  the  U-boat  must  sink 
without  warning.  In  the  American  Civil  War,  when  the 
Confederate  Alabama  destroyed  hundreds  of  Northern  mer 
chant  ships,  it  scrupulously  cared  for  the  safety  of  the  crews 
and  passengers.  But  from  the  first  the  German  submarines 
torpedoed  English  and  French  peaceful  merchant  ships  with 
out  notice,  so  that  little  chance  was  given  even  for  women  and 
children  to  get  into  the  lifeboats.  Then  the  second  year  of 
the  war  saw  a  sudden  expansion  of  this  horrible  form  of  mur 
der.  In  February  of  1915  Germany  proclaimed  a  "  submarine 
blockade  "  of  the  British  Isles.  She  drew  a  broad  zone  on  the 
high  seas  and  declared  that  any  merchant  ship,  even  those  of 
neutral  nations,  found  within  those  waters,  would  be  sunk 
without  warning.  Three  months  later  the  world's  skepti- 
The  cism  at  that  announcement  was  shattered.  May 

Lusitania  7^  ^he  great  English  liner  Lusitania  was  torpedoed 
without  any  attempt  to  save  life.  Nearly  twelve  hundred 
non-combatants,  many  of  them  women  and  children,  were 
drowned. 

One  hundred  and  fourteen  of  the  murdered  passengers 
were  American  citizens.  And  now  indeed  from  much  of 
America  there  went  up  a  fierce  cry  for  war ;  but  large  parts  of 
the  country,  remote  from  the  seaboard,  were  still  indifferent, 
and  shameless  apologists  were  not  lacking  for  even  this 
dastardly  massacre.  President  Wilson,  still  zealous  for 
peace,  used  every  resource  of  diplomacy  to  induce  Germany 
to  abandon  her  horrible  submarine  methods,  —  pointing  out 
distinctly,  at  the  same  time,  in  his  series  of  four  "Lusitania 
Notes"  that  persistence  in  that  policy  would  force  America 
to  fight.  The  German  government  answered  with  quibbles, 


THE  LUS1TANIA  711 

cynical  falsehoods,  and  contemptuous  neglect.     Other  mer 
chant  vessels  were  sunk,  and  finally  (March,  1916)  the  sink 
ing  of  the  Sussex,  an  English  passenger  ship,  again 
involved  the  murder  of  American  citizens.     Presi 
dent  Wilson's  note  to  Germany  took  a  still  sterner  tone  and 
specifically  declared  that  one  more  such  act  would  cause 
him    to    break    off    diplomatic    relations.     Germany    now 
seemed  to  give  way.     She  promised,  grudgingly  and  with 
loopholes   for   future   use,   to  sink   no    more   passenger   or 
merchant   ships  —  unless   they   should   attempt   to   escape 
capture  —  without  providing  for  the  safety  of  passengers 
and  crews  (May  4).     This  episode,  running  over  into  the 
third  year,  closed  the  first  stage  of  this  controversy.     Presi 
dent  Wilson  seemed  to  have  won  a  victory  for  Germany 
civilization.     As    he    afterward    complained,    the  promises 
precautions    taken     by     the     Germans    to    save  amendment 
neutrals  or  non-combatants  proved  "distressingly  meager," 
but  for    some    time    "a   certain    degree    of   restraint    was 
observed." 

In  this  interval,  came  the  American  presidential   cam 
paign  of   1916.     Mr.    Wilson    had    been    renominated    by 
acclamation.     He    drew    much    strength    in    the  The 
West  and  with  the  working  classes  from  the  fact  American 
that  he  had  "kept  us  out  of  war";  while  at  the  eiectioiTof* 
same    time   every    voter   with    a   German   name  1916 
received  circular  after  circular  from  "  German- American " 
societies  urging  opposition  to  him  as  a  foe  to  "the  Father 
land."     The    Republican  party   seemed   at  first   reunited. 
Mr.  Roosevelt,  having  failed  to  win  the  Republican  nomina 
tion,  declined  to  run  again  as  a  Progressive,  and  urged  his 
old  followers  to  support  the  regular  nominee,  Charles  Evans 
Hughes,  who  had  resigned  from  the  Supreme  Court  to  accept 
the  nomination. 

Mr.  Hughes  had  an  honorable  record.  He  was  a  high- 
minded  gentleman,  and  had  always  shown  strong  sympathy 
with  progressive  movements.  He  and  Mr.  Wilson,  it  was 
sometimes  said,  were  much  the  same  type  of  man.  But  Mr. 


712  AMERICA  AND  THE  WAR 

Wilson,  so  far,  had  dominated  the  leaders  of  his  party ;  and 
Mr.  Hughes  in  this  campaign  —  like  the  usual  candidate  - 
put  himself  too  completely  "in  the  hands  of  his  friends." 
Certainly  he  was  far  from  showing  anything  of  his  old  stand 
for  reform,  or  of  the  splendid  leadership  he  was  to  manifest 
in  the  critical  period  after  the  war.  Neither  his  platform 
nor  his  speeches  took  positive  stand  upon  the  war  x  or  upon 
any  progressive  movement  at  home.  Instead  he  relied  upon 
calls  for  protective  tariffs  and  upon  negative  criticism  of 
Mr.  Wilson's  policies.  The  Republican  "Old  Guard"  were 
Mr  once  more  in  full  control,  and  they  were  so 

Wilson's  blindly  confident  as  to  show  their  hand  freely. 
Progressive  leaders  were  grossly  slighted,  and 
thousands  of  Progressive  Republicans  stayed  at  home  in 
disgust.  In  July  Mr.  Hughes  could  probably  have  been 
elected  overwhelmingly  .  In  November,  by  a  close  squeeze 
in  a  small  vote,  the  victory  went  to  Mr.  Wilson. 

No  sooner  had  the  dust  of  the  campaign  cleared  away  than 
the  American  people  began  to  find  indisputable  proofs  of 

new  treacheries  and  new  attacks  by  Germany, 
intrigue  even  within  American  borders.  Official  representa- 
in  neutral  tives  of  Germany  in  the  United  States,  protected 

by  their  diplomatic  position,  had  placed  their  hire 
lings  as  spies  and  plotters  throughout  the  land .  They  had  used 
German  money,  with  the  approval  of  the  German  government, 
to  bribe  American  officials  and  even  to  "influence"  Congress. 
They  had  paid  public  speakers  to  foment  distrust  and  hatred 
toward  the  Allies.  They  had  hired  agitators  to  stir  up  strikes 
and  riots  in  order  to  paralyze  industries.  They  incited  to 
insurrection  in  San  Domingo,  Haiti,  and  Cuba,  so  as  to  dis 
turb  American  peace.  They  paid  wretches  to  blow  up  rail 
way  bridges,  ships,  and  munition  plants,  with  the  loss  of 
millions  of  dollars  of  property  and  with  the  murder  of  hun 
dreds  of  peaceful  American  workers.  Each  week  brought 
fresh  proof  of  such  outrage  —  more  and  more  frequently, 

1  Mr.  Roosevelt  was  unreservedly  for  war  with  Germany;  but  he  was  allowed 
only  a  carefully  guarded  part  in  the  campaign. 


GERMANY  MAKES  NEUTRALITY  IMPOSSIBLE       713 

formal  proof  in  the  courts  —  and  finally  President  Wilson 
dismissed  the  Austrian  ambassador  (who  had  been  directly 
implicated)  and  various  guilty  officers  connected  with  the 
German  embassy. 

All  this  turned  attention  more  and  more  to  the  hos 
tility  to  America  plainly  avowed  for  years  by  German 
leaders.  Said  the  Kaiser  himself  to  the  American  The  danger 
ambassador  (October  22,  1915),  at  a  time  when  to  America 
our  government  was  showing  extreme  gentleness  in  calling 
Germany  to  account  for  her  murder  of  peaceful  American 
citizens  on  the  high  seas,-  "America  had  better  look  out. 
...  I  shall  stand  no  nonsense  from  America  after  this 
war."  Other  representative  Germans  threatened  more 
specifically  that  when  England  had  been  conquered, 
Germany,  unable  to  indemnify  herself  in  exhausted  Europe 
for  her  terrible  expenses,  would  take  that  indemnity  from 
the  rich  and  un warlike  United  States.  It  came  home  to  us 
that  our  fancied  security  —  unprepared  for  war  as  we  were  - 
was  due  only  to  the  protecting  shield  of  England's  fleet.  If 
Germany  came  out  victor  from  the  European  struggle,  we 
must  give  up  our  unmilitaristic  life,  and  turn  our  country 
permanently  into  a  huge  camp,  on  the  European  model  - 
and  there  was  doubt  whether  time  would  be  given  to  form 
such  a  camp.  German  militaristic  despotism  and  peace  for 
free  peoples  could  not  exist  in  the  same  world. 

President  Wilson  strove  still  to  avoid  war.     At  the  same 
time  he  had  begun  to  speak  solemn  warning  to  our  own 
people  that  we  could  not  keep  out  of  the  struggle  present 
unless  peace  could  be  secured  soon  and  upon  a  Wilson 
just   basis.     December    22,    he    sent    to    all   the  Emgwents 
warring  governments  a  note  asking  them  to  state  to  state 
their  aims.     The  German  government's  reply  was  * 
plainly     evasive.     The    Allies,     with     apparent     sincerity, 
demanded    only    "restoration    and    reparation,"    with    an 
adjustment  of  disputed  territories  according  to  the  will  of 
the  inhabitants,  and  "guarantees  "  for  future  safety  against 
German  aggression.     Then  January  22,  1917,  the  President 
read  to  Congress  a  notable  address  proposing  a  League  of 


714  AMERICA  AND  THE  WAR 

Nations  to  enforce  Peace,  not  a  peace  of  despotic  and  irre 
sponsible  governments,  but  a  peace  made  by  free  peoples 
(among  whom  the  small  nations  should  have  their  full  and 
equal  voice)  and  "made  secure  by  the  organized  major 
force  of  mankind." 

Germany  had  ready  a  new  fleet  of  enlarged  submarines, 
and  she  was  about  to  resume  her  barbarous  warfare  upon 
Germany  neutrals.  She  knew  this  might  join  the  United 
renews  States  to  her  foes ;  but  she  held  us  impotent  in 
restricted"  war>  and  believed  she  could  keep  us  busied  at 
u-boat  home.  To  this  last  end,  through  her  ambassador 
at  Washington  —  while  he  was  still  enjoying  our 
hospitality  —  she  had  secretly  been  trying,  as  we  learned  a 
little  later,  to  get  Mexico  and  Japan  to  join  in  an  attack 
upon  us,  promising  them  aid  and  huge  portions  of  our  western 
territory.  January  31,  the  German  government  gave  a  two- 
weeks  notice  that  it  was  to  renew  its  "unrestricted"  sub 
marine  policy,  explaining  to  its  own  people,  with  moral 
callousness,  why  it  had  for  a  time  appeared  to  yield  to  Ameri 
can  pressure  —  and  offering  to  America  an  insulting  privi 
lege  of  sending  one  ship  a  week  to  England,  provided  it  were 
painted  in  stripes  of  certain  colors  and  width,  and  provided  it 
followed  a  certain  narrow  ocean  lane  marked  out  by  Ger 
many.  President  Wilson  at  once  dismissed  the  German  am 
bassador,  according  to  his  promise  of  the  preceding  March, 
recalled  our  ambassador,  Gerard,  from  Berlin,  and  appeared 
before  Congress  to  announce,  in  a  solemn  address,  the  com 
plete  severance  of  diplomatic  relations  —  expressing,  how 
ever,  a  faint  hope  that  the  German  government  might  still 
refrain  from  compelling  us,  by  some  "overt  act,"  to  repel 
force  by  force.  March  12,  after  a  number  more  of  American 
citizens  had  been  murdered  at  sea1  he  placed  guards  on 
our  merchant  vessels.  Germany  announced  that  such 
guards  if  captured  would  be  treated  as  pirates.  Now  the 

1  Besides  the  eight  American  vessels  sunk  before  March,  1916,  eight  had  been 
sunk  in  the  one  month  from  February  3  to  March  2,  1917.  During  the  two  months, 
February  and  March,  105  Norwegian  vessels  were  sunk,  with  the  loss  of  328  lives. 
By  April  3,  1917,  according  to  figures  compiled  by  the  United  States  government, 


WILSON'S   WAR  MESSAGE  715 

temper  of  the  nation  was  changing  swiftly.  Apathy 
vanished.  Direct  and  open  opposition  to  war  there  still 
was  from  pro-Germans  and  from  extreme  pacifists,  includ 
ing  the  organization  of  the  Socialist  party ;  but  the  great 
majority  of  the  nation  roused  itself  to  defend  the  rights 
of  mankind  against  a  dangerous  government  running 
amuck,  and  turned  its  eyes  confidently  to  the  President 
for  a  signal.  And  April  2  President  Wilson  America 
appeared  before  the  new  Congress,  met  in  special  "  goes  in  " 
session,  to  ask  it  to  declare  that  we  were  now  at  war  with 
Germany.  April  6,  by  overwhelming  votes,  that  declara 
tion  was  adopted. 

America  went  to  war  not  to  avenge  slights  to  its  "honor," 
or  merely  to  protect  the  property  of  its  citizens,  or  even 
merely  to  protect  their  lives  at  sea.  America  went  to  war 
not  merely  in  self-defense.  We  did  war  for  this,  but  more 
in  defense  of  free  government,  in  defense  of  civilization,  in 
defense  of  humanity  and  in  hope  of  establishing  a  lasting 
world  peace.  Said  the  President's  war  message : 

"Neutrality  is  no  longer  feasible  or  desirable,  when  the  peace 
of  the  world  is  involved,  and  the  freedom  of  its  peoples,  and  when 
the  menace  to  that  peace  and  freedom  lies  in  the  existence  of 
autocratic  governments  backed  by  organized  force  which  is  con 
trolled  wholly  by  their  will,  not  the  will  of  their  people.  .  .  .  We 
have  no  quarrel  with  the  German  people.  ...  A  steadfast  concert 
for  peace  can  never  be  maintained  except  by  a  partnership  of 
democratic  nations.  No  autocratic  government  could  be  trusted 
to  keep  faith  within  it.  Only  free  peoples  .  .  .  can  prefer  the 
interests  of  mankind  to  any  narrow  interests  of  their  own.  .  .  . 

"We  are  glad  ...  to  fight  for  the  ultimate  peace  of  the  world 
and  for  the  liberation  of  its  peoples,  the  German  people  included.  .  .  . 
The  world  must  be  made  safe  for  democracy.  .  .  .  We  have  no 
selfish  ends.  We  desire  no  conquests,  no  dominion.  We  seek 
no  indemnities  for  ourselves,  no  material  compensations  for  the 
sacrifices  we  shall  freely  make.  .  .  .  The  right  is  more  precious 

686  neutral  vessels  had  been  sunk  by  Germany  without  counting  American  ships. 
When  we  turn  to  the  still  more  important  question  of  lives,  we  count  up  226  Ameri 
can  citizens  slain  by  the  action  of  German  submarines  before  April,  1917.  Be 
fore  the  close  of  the  war,  5000  Norwegian  sailors  were  murdered  so. 


716  AMERICA  AND  THE  WAR 

than  peace  ;  and  we  shall  fight  for  the  things  which  we  have  always 
carried  nearest  our  hearts  —  for  democracy,  for  the  right  of  those 
who  submit  to  authority  to  have  a  voice  in  their  own  governments, 
for  the  rights  and  liberties  of  small  nations,  for  a  universal  dominion 
of  right  by  such  a  concert  of  free  peoples  as  shall  bring  peace  and 
safety  to  all  nations." 

Splendid  was  the  awakening  of  America,  following  on  the 
President's  call.  The  pacifist  Bryan  had  resigned  from  the 
The  Cabinet  in  June  of  1915,  as  a  protest  against  the 

response  President's  firmness  in  pressing  the  Lusitania 
President's  matter:  but  now  he  promptly  declared,  "The 
caU  quickest  road  to  peace  is  through  the  war  to 

victory";  and  he  telegraphed  the  President  an  offer  of 
his  services  in  any  capacity.  Henry  Ford,  who  had  led  a 
shipload  of  peace  enthusiasts  to  Europe  the  year  before,  to 
plead  with  the  warring  governments  there,  now  placed  his 
huge  automobile  factories  absolutely  at  the  disposal  of  the 
government,  and  became  a  valued  worker  in  one  of  the 
new  War  Boards.  Charles  Edward  Russell,  '  choosing  to  be 
an  American  rather  than  a  Socialist  if  he  could  not  be  both,' 
served  on  a  great  Commission  to  Russia,  and  on  his  return 
supported  and  explained  the  war  with  voice  and  pen. 
Upton  Sinclair  in  his  Weekly  eloquently  defended  the  war 
and  championed  the  President  as  the  leader  of  the  world's 
moral  sentiment.  The  great  majority  of  Americans  of 
German  birth  or  descent  also  rallied  promptly  to  the  flag  of 
the  land  they  had  chosen.  Most  important  of  all,  the 
organized  wage-earners  spoke  with  emphasis  and  unity  for 
America  and  democracy :  in  November  the  American 
Federation  by  a  vote  of  21,579  local  unions  as  against  402, 
organized  the  Alliance  for  Labor  and  Democracy  to  support 
the  war. 

And  now  the  war  spread  more  widely  still.  Cuba  at  once 
followed  the  example  of  the  United  States  in  declaring  war 
The  war  against  Germany,  and  most  of  the  countries  of 
spreads  South  and  Central  America  either  took  the  same 
action  within  a  few  months  or  at  least  broke  off  diplomatic 


THE   YEARS   1916-1917  717 

relations  with  the  Central  European  Powers.  Portugal 
had  entered  the  war  in  1916,  because  of  her  alliance  with 
England.  China  and  Siam  now  came  in.  This  lining  up  of 
the  world  had  moral  value,  and  no  small  bearing  upon  the 
matter  of  supplies.  In  particular,  the  German  ships  which, 
since  the  beginning  of  the  war,  had  been  seeking  refuge  in 
the  harbors  of  these  new  belligerents  were  now  seized  for 
the  Allies,  and  helped  to  make  good  the  losses  due  to  sub 
marines.  None  of  these  powers  except  America,  how 
ever,  were  to  have  much  direct  effect  upon  military 
operations. 

Those  operations  had  continued  favorable  to  Germany 
through  1916.  True,  the  East  front  offered  two  promising 
surprises  on  the  side  of  the  Allies,  but  each  was  Russian 
followed  by  swift  collapse.  (1)  Russia  at  first  collapse 
showed  remarkable  recovery,  and  in  June  won  sweeping 
successes  against  the  Austrians.  By  July,  however,  her 
supplies  of  ammunition  had  again  given  out,  and  she 
was  saved  from  complete  overthrow,  for  the  moment, 
only  by  sacrificing  Roumania.  (2)  For  now  that  Roumania 
country  had  entered  the  war,  to  recover  from  crushed 
Austria  the  Roumanian  province  of  Transylvania.  But 
the  Tsar  had  induced  her  to  go  in  too  soon  by  promises  of 
support  that  was  never  given.  The  German  traitorous 
court  party  at  Petrograd,  now  in  control  of  the  weak  Tsar, 
planned  a  separate  peace  with  Germany,  and  intended 
deliberately  to  buy  easy  terms  by  betraying  Roumania. 
Bulgarians  and  Teutons  entered  that  doomed  country 
from  south  and  west.  December  16  the  capital  fell,  and 
only  the  rigors  of  winter  enabled  the  Roumanian  army 
to  keep  a  hold  upon  a  narrow  strip  of  its  country.  A 
large  Allied  army  at  Saloniki  did  not  stir,  because  if  it  left 
its  base,  it  was  in  peril  of  being  stabbed  in  the  back  by 
Constantine  of  Greece;  and  the  Tsar  vetoed  all  proposals 
of  effective  measures  against  that  fellow  monarch. 

And,  in  spite  of  America's  entry  into  the  war,  Germany 
continued  to  win  through  1917  also.  Russia  did  drop  out. 
The  Tsar's  ministers  had  maddened  the  Petrograd  populace 


718  AMERICA  AND  THE   WAR 

by  permitting  or  preparing  breakdown  in  the  distribution  of 
food.  March  11,  the  populace  rose.  The  troops  joined 
The  Russian  tne  rioters.  Absolutely  deserted  by  all  classes, 
Revolution  Nicholas  abdicated  on  March  15.  The  Liberal 
leaders  of  the  Duma  proclaimed  a  provisional 
government,  which  in  a  few  weeks  (June,  1917)  was  replaced 
by  a  Socialist-democratic  government  led  by 
Kerensky,  an  emotional,  well-meaning  enthusiast, 
altogether  unfit  to  grapple  with  the  tremendous  difficulties 
before  Russia.  Finland,  the  Ukrainian  districts,  and  Siberia 
were  showing  signs  of  breaking  away  from  central  Russia. 
Everywhere  the  starving  and  desperate  peasants  had  begun 
to  appropriate  the  lands  of  the  great  estates,  sometimes 
quietly,  sometimes  with  violence  and  outrage.  Transporta 
tion  was  broken  down,  and  the  crude  industrial  system  was 
gone.  The  army  was  completely  demoralized.  The  peas 
ant  soldiers,  so  often  betrayed  by  their  officers,  were  eager 
for  peace,  that  they  might  go  home  to  get  their  share  of 
the  land.  In  all  large  cities,  extreme  Socialists  (Bolshevists) 
began  to  win  support  for  a  further  revolution. 

Kerensky  battled  against  these  conditions  for  a  while  with 
some  show  of  success.  He  tried  zealously  to  continue  the 
war,  and,  in  July,  he  did  induce  part  of  the  demoralized 
army  to  take  up  the  offensive  once  more.  But  after  slight 
successes,  the  military  machine  collapsed.  Whole  regiments 
and  brigades  mutinied,  murdered  their  despotic  officers, 
broke  up,  and  went  to  their  homes.  The  remaining  army 
was  intoxicated  with  the  new  political  "liberty,"  and  frater 
nized  with  the  few  German  regiments  left  to  watch  it.  Dur 
ing  this  chaos,  real  power,  over  nearly  all  Russia,  fell  to  new 
councils  of  workmen's  delegates  (with  representatives  also 
The  Boishe-  from  the  army  and  the  peasantry) .  The  Bolshe- 
viki  vjki  saw  that  these  " Soviets,"  rather  than  the 

old  agencies,  had  become  the  real  government,  and  by 
shrewd  political  campaigning  they  captured  these  bodies. 
Kerensky  fled,  and  (November  7,  1917)  the  Bolsheviki,  led 
by  Nikolai  Lenin  and  Leon  Trotsky,  seized  the  govern 
ment,  announcing  their  determination  to  make  peace  upon 


GERMAN  GAINS  IN  1917  719 

the  principle  of  "no  indemnities  and  no  annexations."  The 
Allies  felt  deeply  indignant  at  the  "  betrayal "  of  the  cause 
of  freedom ;  but  it  is  clear  now  that  no  Russian  And  a  sepa- 
government  could  have  continued  the  struggle,  rate  peace 
The  Russian  people  had  borne  greater  sacrifice  than  any 
other ;  they  were  absolutely  without  resources ;  they  were 
unspeakably  weary  of  war ;  and  they  failed  to  understand 
that  German  victory  would  mean  the  return  of  Tsarism. 

On  the  West  front,  both  French  and  English  had  planned 
vigorous  offensives  for  the  early  spring.  But  the  French 
attack  along  the  Aisne  was  heavily  repulsed,  and  the  army 
was  so  demoralized  that  it  could  undertake  no  further 
important  operations  during  the  season.  There  was  con 
siderable  lack  of  confidence  in  the  commanding  officers, 
with  consequent  demoralization  among  the  common  soldiers. 
This  of  itself  made  English  success  doubtful.  Early  in  the 
spring  the  Germans  had  executed  an  extended  The 
withdrawal  in  front  of  the  British  lines  from  their  "Hinden- 
trenches  of  two  years'  warfare  to  a  new  "Hinden-  burg  Lm< 
burg  Line,"  which,  they  boasted,  had  been  prepared  so  as 
to  be  absolutely  impregnable  to  any  assault.  This  ma 
neuver  delayed  the  British  attack  for  some  weeks.  Heavy 
guns  had  to  be  brought  up  to  the  new  positions  over  terri 
tory  rendered  almost  impassable  by  the  Germans  in  their 
retreat,  and  new  lines  of  communication  had  to  be  estab 
lished.  These  things  were  accomplished,  however,  with  a 
rapidity  and  efficiency  wholly  surprising  to  the  German 
High  Command ;  and  in  the  subsequent  British  attack 
(April-November)  the  Germans  were  saved  only  by  the 
fact  that  now  they  were  able  to  transfer  all  their  best 
divisions  from  the  Russian  front. 

The  Russian  collapse  had  been  caused  in  part  by  skillful 
German  propaganda  among  the  Russian  soldiers  that  the 
war  was  the  Tsar's  war,  or  at  least  a  capitalist  The  Italian 
war,  and  that  their  German  brothers  were  ready  collaPse 
to  give  the  new  Russia  a  fair  peace.     Now,  like  tactics 
were  used  against  the  Italians,  until  their  military  machine, 


720  AMERICA  AND  THE  WAR 

too,  went  to  pieces.  Then  the  Austrians  suddenly  took 
the  offensive.  They  tore  a  huge  gap  in  the  Italian  lines, 
took  200,000  prisoners  and  a  great  part  of  Italy's  heavy 
artillery,  and  advanced  into  Venetia,  driving  the  rem 
nants  of  the  Italian  army  before  them  in  rout.  French 
and  British  reinforcements  were  hurried  in ;  and  the 
Teutons  proved  unable  to  force  the  Piave  River.  Italy  had 
not  been  put  out  of  the  war  as  Russia  had  been ;  but  for 
the  next  six  months,  until  well  into  the  next  year,  the  most 
that  she  could  do,  even  with  the  help  of  Allied  forces  sadly 
needed  elsewhere,  was  to  hold  her  new  line. 

The  brightest  phase  of  the  year's  struggle  was  at  the  point 
where  there  had  seemed  the  greatest  peril.  Germany's  new 
The  failure  submarine  warfare  had  indeed  destroyed  an  enor- 
ofthe  mous  shipping  tonnage,  and  for  a  few  months 

had  promised  to  make  good  the  threat  of  starving 
England  into  surrender.  But  an  admirable  English  con 
voy  system  was  organized  to  protect  important  merchant 
fleets ;  shipbuilding  was  speeded  up  to  supply  the  place  of 
tonnage  sunk;  submarine  chasers  and  patrol  boats  waged 
relentless,  daring,  and  successful  war  against  the  treacherous 
and  barbarous  craft  of  the  enemy.  America  sent  five  battle 
ships  to  reinforce  the  British  Grand  Fleet  and  a  much  more 
considerable  addition  to  the  anti-submarine  fleet ;  and 
newly  created  American  shipyards  had  begun  to  launch  new 
cargo  ships  in  ever  increasing  numbers,  upon  a  scale  never 
before  known  to  the  world.  The  Allies  were  kept  supplied 
with  food  and  other  necessaries  enough  to  avert  any  supreme 
calamity,  and  before  September,  1917,  the  menace  —  in  its 
darkest  form  —  had  passed.  It  had  become  plain  that  sub 
marines  were  not  to  be  the  decisive  factor  in  the  war. 

And  now  America  was  slowly  getting  into  the  struggle  — 
slowly,  and  yet  more  swiftly  than  either  friend  or  foe  had 
America  dreamed  possible.  The  general  expectation  had 
gets  into  been  that,  totally  unprepared  as  the  United 
States  was,  her  chief  contribution  would  be  in 
money,  ships,  and  supplies.  These  she  gave  in  generous 


A  RACE  BETWEEN   GERMANY  AND   AMERICA      721 


measure  (chapter  xlvi,  below).  But  also,  from  the  first, 
the  government  planned  military  participation  on  a  huge 
scale.  Congress  was  induced  to  pass  a  "selective  con 
scription"  act;  and  as  early  as  June  a  small  contingent 
of  excellent  fighters  was  sent  to  France  —  mainly  from 
the  old  regular  army  —  under  the  command  of  General 
John  J.  Pershing.  In 
the  early  fall,  new  regi 
ments  were  transported 
(some  300,000  before 
Christmas) ,  and  per 
haps  half  a  million  more 
were  in  training  camps. 
By  1920,  it  -was  then 
thought  by  the  hope 
ful,  America  could  place 
three  million  men  in  the 
field  in  Europe,  or  even 
five  million,  and  so  de 
cide  the  war.  Events 
made  a  supreme  exertion 
necessary  even  sooner, 
and  America  met  the 
need. 

France    could    stand 
one  year  more  of  war, 
but  she  was  very  nearly 
"bled   white,"   as   Ger 
many  had  boasted.    Her 
working     classes     were 
war-weary  and  discour 
aged,  and   the   Germans  had  infected  all  classes  in  that 
country  more  or  less  successfully  with  their  poisonous  and 
baseless  propaganda  to  the  effect  that  England  was  using 
France  to  fight  her  battles,  and  that  she  herself  French 
was  bearing  far  less  than  her  proper  share  of  the  discourage- 
burden.     French  morale  was  in  danger  of  giving  r 
way,  as  Russian  and  Italian  had  given  way.     It  was  saved 


GENERAL  JOHN  J.  PERSHING. 


722  AMERICA  AND  THE  WAR 

by  two  things :  by  the  tremendous  energy  of  the  aged 
Clemenceau—  "The  Tiger"  —whom  the  crisis  had  called 
to  the  premiership ;  and  by  the  appearance  in  France,  none 
too  soon,  of  American  soldiers  in  large  numbers. 

Even  in  England,  peace  talk  began  to  be  heard,  not  merely 
among  the  workers  but  here  and  there  in  all  ranks  of  society. 
Peace  talk  And  among  the  laborers  this  dangerous  leaning 
even  in  was  fearfully  augmented  when  the  Russian  Bolshe- 
viki  published  the  copies  of  the  "Secret  Treaties" 
between  England,  France,  Italy,  and  the  Tsar's  government, 
revealing  the  Allied  governments  as  purchasing  one  another's 
aid  by  promises  of  territorial  and  commercial  spoils.  For  the 
first  time  the  charge  against  the  Allies  that  on  their  side  too 
the  war  was  "a  capitalist  and  imperialist  war"  was  given 
some  color  of  presumption. 

In  Germany,  too,  the  masses  had  become  war-weary. 
The  entire  generation  of  their  young  men  was  threatened 
Conditions  with  extinction,  and  their  children  were  being 
in  Germany  pitifully  stunted  from  lack  of  food.  The  "Inde 
pendent  Socialists,"  as  Ludendorff  now  tells  us,  had  spread 
among  the  people  a  peace  propaganda  which  crippled 
seriously  the  efficiency  of  the  army.  The  Reichstag  had 
even  adopted  resolutions  for  peace  without  annexations 
or  indemnities.  But  the  junkers  and  great  capitalists  were 
still  bent  upon  complete  military  victory,  which  they 
seemed  to  see  within  their  grasp.  The  German  warlords 
at  once  made  it  plain  that  they  recognized  no  binding  force 
in  the  Reichstag  resolutions,  and  once  more  they  brought 
the  nation  to  their  way  of  thinking.  They  could  now 
turn  all  their  strength  as  never  before  upon  France  and 
England,  and  they  were  confident  they  could  win  the  war 
before  American  armies  could  become  an  important  factor. 
The  Allies,  they  insisted,  had  not  shipping  enough  to  bring 
the  Americans  in  any  numbers  ;  still  less  to  bring  the  supplies 
needful  for  them  ;  and  then  the  Americans  "couldn't  fight" 
anyway  without  years  of  training. 

Thus  in  1918  the  war  became  a  race  between  Germany 
and  America.  Could  America  put  decisive  numbers  in 


THE   FOURTEEN  POINTS  723 

action  on  the  West  front  before   Germany   could  deliver 
a  knock-out  blow?     While  winter  held  the  German  armies 
inactive,  the  British  and  American  navies  carried 
each    week    thousands   of    American   soldiers    to  between 
France,  English  ships  carrying  much  the  greater  Germany 
number.     And  during  these  same  months  America 
and  England  won  a  supremely  important  victory  in  the 
moral  field.     In  the  summer  of   1917  the  Pope  had  pro 
posed   peace   negotiations   on    the   basis    of   July,    1914  - 
before    the    war    began.     Woodrow    Wilson    answered,  for 
America  and  for  the  Allies,  that  there  could  be  no  safe  peace 
with  the  faithless  Hohenzollern  government.     This  cleared 
the  air,  and  made  plain  at  least  one  of  the  "guarantees"  the 
Allies  must  secure.     Then  Austria,  war-weary  and  under  a 
new  Emperor,  suggested  peace  negotiations  in  a  conciliatory 
note  —  possibly  hoping  also  to  weaken  Allied  morale.     In 
stead,   in  two  great  speeches,  Premier  Lloyd   George  and 
President  Wilson  stated  the  war  aims  of  the  Allies  with  a 
studious  moderation  which  conciliated  wavering  elements  in 
their  own  countries,  and  at  the  same  time  with  a  keen  logic 
that  put  Germany  in  the  wrong  even  more  clearly  than  before 
in  the  eyes  of  the  world  and  drove  deeper  the  wedge  between 
the  German  government  and  the  German  people.     Lloyd 
George   (January  6,   1918)   demanded  complete  reparation 
for  Belgium,    but  disclaimed  intention  to  exact  indemnities 
other  than  payment  for  injuries  done  by  Germany  in  The 
defiance  of  international  law.     President  Wilson's  "  Fourteen 
address  contained   his   famous   Fourteen   Points, 
which    were    soon    accepted    apparently    throughout    the 
Allied  world  as  a  charter  of  a  coming  world  peace. 

1.  "Open  covenants  of  peace,  openly  arrived  at;  after  which, 
diplomacy  shall  proceed  always  ...  in  the  public  view."  2.  Ab 
solute  freedom  of  the  seas  (outside  territorial  waters)  in  peace 
and  in  war,  except  where  they  may  be  closed  by  international 
action.  3.  Removal,  so  far  as  possible,  of  economic  barriers. 
4.  Disarmament  by  international  action.  5.  An  "absolutely 
impartial  adjustment  of  all  colonial  claims  .  .  .  the  interests  of 
peoples  concerned  to  have  equal  weight  with  the  equitable  claim 


724  AMERICA   AND   THE   WAR 

of  the  government  whose  title  is  to  be  determined."  6.  Evacua 
tion  of  all  Russian  territory,  and  ...  "a  sincere  welcome  into 
the  society  of  free  nations  under  institutions  of  her  own  choosing, 
[with]  assistance  also  of  every  kind  that  she  may  need  and  may 
herself  desire."  7.  Evacuation  and  restoration  of  Belgium. 
8.  Reparation  for  devastation  in  France,  and  return  of  Alsace- 
Lorraine.  9.  "Readjustment  of  the  frontiers  of  Italy  .  .  . 
along  clearly  recognizable  lines  of  nationality."  10.  Peoples  of  the 
Austrian  Empire  to  be  accorded  an  opportunity  for  autonomous 
development  (a  provision  that  was  to  be  outrun  in  a  few  months 
by  the  course  of  the  war).  11.  Serbia  to  be  given  a  free  and 
secure  access  to  the  sea ;  and  the  relations  of  the  Balkan  states 
to  be  "  determined  by  friendly  council  along  clearly  recognizable 
lines  of  allegiance  and  nationality."  12.  Subject  nationalities 
of  the  Turkish  empire  assured  of  "  autonomous  development.'* 

13.  A  free   Poland    (with   access   to  the   sea),    "  to   include   the 
territories     inhabited     by     indisputably    Polish     populations." 

14.  A  "  general  association  of  nations  "  under  specific  covenants. 
The  significance  of  the  Fourteen  Points  lay  even  more  in  their 

spirit  than  in  these  detailed  provisions.  "We  have  no  jealousy 
of  German  greatness,"  concluded  this  great  utterance,  "and  there 
is  nothing  in  this  program  that  impairs  it.  We  do  not  wish  to 
injure  her  or  to  block  in  any  way  her  legitimate  influence  or  power. 
We  do  not  wish  to  fight  her  either  with  arms  or  with  hostile 
arrangements  of  trade  if  she  is  willing  to  associate  herself  with  us 
and  the  other  peace-loving  nations  of  the  world  in  covenants  of 
justice  and  law  and  fair  dealing." 

And  now  Germany  herself  made  plain  how  absolutely  right 
the  Allies  were  in  their  contention  that  the  Hohenzollerns 
could  be  trusted  to  keep  no  promises.  March  3,  1918,  the 
German  militarists,  with  the  grossest  of  bad  faith,  shame 
lessly  broke  their  many  pledges  to  the  helpless  Bolshevik! 
and  forced  upon  Russia  the  "Peace  of  Brest-Litovsk."  By 
that  dictated  treaty,  Germany  virtually  became  overlord 
to  a  broad  belt  of  vassal  states  taken  from  Russia  —  Finland, 
the  Baltic  Provinces,  Lithuania,  Poland,  Ukrainia  —  and 
even  the  remaining  "Great  Russia"  had  to  agree  to  German 
control  of  her  industrial  reorganization.  When  the  German 
perfidy  had  revealed  itself  suddenly,  after  long  and  deceitful 
negotiations,  the  angered  and  betrayed  Bolsheviki  wished  to 


THE  LAST  GERMAN   DRIVE 


725 


break  off,  and  renew  the  war.  They  were  absolutely  helpless, 
however,  without  prompt  Allied  aid  upon  a  large  scale.  This 
aid  they  asked  for,  but  urgent  cablegrams  brought  no  answer. 
The  Allies  apparently  had  been  so  repelled  by  the  Bolshevist 
industrial  and  political  policy  that  they  were  unwilling  to 
deal  with  that  government,  and  preferred  to  leave  Russia 
to  its  fate  —  and  to  the  Germans. 


THE  "  MiTTEL-EuROPA  "  EMPIRE  at  its  greatest  extent  in  March,  1918.  In  Asia, 
only  a  few  months  before,  it  had  reached  to  the  Persian  Gulf  and  the  Red 
Sea  (cf.  p.  729),  but  lacked  then  the  parts  of  old  Russia  afterward  acquired, 
marked  here  by  perpendicular  shadings. 

Naturally  the  Germans  opened  the  campaigns  in  the  West 
at  the  earliest  moment  possible.     They  had  now  a  vast 
superiority  both  in  men  and  in  heavy  guns  there.  The  last 
March   21    they    attacked    the    British    lines    in  German 
Picardy    with   overwhelming    forces.     After    five  c 
days   of  terrific  fighting   the   British   were   hurled    out    of 
their   trench   lines   and   driven   back   with   frightful   losses 
nearly    to    Amiens,  leaving    a    broad  and  dangerous  gap 


726  AMERICA  AND  THE  WAR 

between  them  and  the  French.  But,  as  so  often  in  their 
great  offensives  in  this  war,  the  Germans  had  exhausted 
themselves  in  their  mass  attack ;  and,  while  they  paused,  a 
French  force  threw  itself  into  the  gap,  and  British  reserves 
reinforced  the  shattered  front  lines. 

For  the  first  time  since  the  First  Battle  of  the  Marne, 
the  Germans  had  forced  the  fighting  on  the  West  front 
into  the  open.  In  April  they  struck  again  farther  north, 
in  Flanders,  and  again  they  seemed  almost  to  have  over 
whelmed  the  British;  but,  fighting  desperately,  "with  our 
backs  to  the  wall"  as  Haig  phrased  it  in  his  solemn  order 
to  his  dying  army,  and  reinforced  by  some  French  divi 
sions,  the  British  kept  their  front  unbroken,  bent  and 
thinned  though  it  was.  After  another  month  of  preparation, 
the  Germans  struck  fiercely  in  a  general  attack  on  the  French 
lines  north  of  the  Aisne,  and,  breaking  through  for  the 
moment  on  an  eighteen-mile  front,  once  more  reached  the 
Marne.  Here,  however,  they  were  halted,  largely  by  Ameri 
can  troops,  at  Chateau-Thierry.  Then,  while  the  Americans 
made  splendid  counter-attacks,  as  at  Belleau  Wood  (renamed, 
for  them,  "Wood  of  the  Marines"),  the  French  lines  were 
reformed,  so  that  the  Allies  still  presented  a  continuous  front, 
irregular  though  it  was  with  dangerous  salients  and  wedges. 
At  almost  the  same  time,  Austria,  forced  into  action  again  in 
Italy  by  German  insistence,  was  repulsed  in  a  general 
attack  on  the  Piave. 

Time  was  fighting  for  the  Allies.  Disasters  had  at  last 
induced  them  to  appoint  a  generalissimo.  This  position 
was  given  to  Ferdinand  Foch,  who,  though  then  a  subordi 
nate,  had  been  the  real  hero  of  the  First  Marne.  For  the  rest 
of  the  struggle,  the  Allied  forces  were  directed  with  a  unity 
and  skill  that  had  been  impossible  under  divided  commands, 
even  with  the  heartiest  desire  for  cooperation. 

And  now,  too,  America  really  had  an  army  in  France. 
Before  the  end  of  June,  her  effective  soldiers  there  numbered 
1,250,000.  Each  month  afterward  brought  at  least  300,000 
more.  By  September  the  number  exceeded  two  millions, 


THE   ALLIED  OFFENSIVE 


727 


with   a  million   more  already   training   in  America.     The 
Germans  could  not  again   take  up   the   offensive  for  five 
weeks  (June  11-July  15),  and  in  this  interval  the  TheAmer- 
balance  of  available   man-power   turned   against  icans 
them.     July  15,  they  attacked  again  in  great  force  amve 
along  the  Marne,  but  this  onset  broke  against  a  stone-wall 


Zeebrugge 
Ost 


J§ 


H-~--0    r^---*f\  S 

fSSS^-Q°enlin     iM ( 


GERMAN  LINES  ON  JULY  15  AND  NOVEMBER  10,  1918. 

resistance  of  French  and  American  troops.  For  the  first 
time  in  the  war,  a  carefully  prepared  offensive  failed  to 
gain  ground. 

The  German  failure  was  plain  by  the  17th.     On  the  18th, 


728  AMERICA  AND   THE   WAR 

• 

before  the  Germans  could  withdraw  or  reorganize,  Foch 
began  his  great  offensive,  by  counter-attacking  upon  the 
Foch's  exposed  western  flank  of  the  invaders.  This 

offensive  move  took  the  Germans  completely  by  surprise. 
Their  front  all  but  collapsed  along  a  critical  line  of 
twenty-eight  miles.  Foch  allowed  them  no  hour  of  rest. 
Unlike  his  opponents,  he  did  not  attempt  gigantic  attacks, 
to  break  through  at  some  one  point.  Instead,  he  kept 
up  a  continuous  offensive,  threatening  every  part  of  the 
enemy's  front,  but  striking  now  here,  now  there,  on  one 
exposed  flank  and  then  on  another,  always  ready  at  a 
moment  to  take  advantage  of  a  new  opening,  and  giving  the 
Germans  no  chance  to  withdraw  their  forces  without 
imperiling  key  positions.  Before  the  end  of  August  the 
Allies  had  won  back  all  the  ground  lost  in  the  spring. 
The  Germans  had  made  their  last  throw  —  and  lost. 
Foch's  pressure  never  relaxed.  In  September  American 
divisions  began  an  offensive  on  a  third  part  of  the  front, 
culminating  in  a  drive  toward  Sedan,  to  cut  one  of  the  two 
main  railways  that  supplied  the  German  front,  and  at  the 
same  time  the  British  were  wrenching  great  sections  of  the 
"Hindenburg  Line"  from  the  foe.  In  the  opening  days  of 
October  the  German  commanders  reported  to  Berlin  that  the 
war  was  lost. 

This  result  was  determined  largely  by  events  in  the  East. 
In  September,  the  Allied  force,  so  long  held  inactive  at 
victories  Saloniki,  suddenly  took  the  offensive,  crushing 
in  the  East  ^he  Bulgarians  in  a  great  battle  on  the  Vardar. 
Political  changes  had  made  this  move  possible.  In  1917, 
now  that  there  was  no  Tsar  to  interfere,  the  English  and 
French  had  deposed  and  banished  King  Constantine  of 
Greece ;  and  Venizelos,  the  new  head  of  the  Greek  state, 
was  warmly  committed  to  the  Allied  cause.  Foch's  pres 
sure  made  it  impossible  for  the  Germans  to  transfer  rein 
forcements  to  the  Bulgarians  from  the  West.  The  Saloniki 
forces  advanced  swiftly.  Tsar  Ferdinand  abdicated,  and 
(September  30)  a  provisional  Bulgarian  government  signed 


THE  TEUTONIC   COLLAPSE  729 

an  armistice  amounting  to  unconditional  surrender  —  open 
ing  also  the  way  for  an  attack  upon  Austria  from  the  south. 

Another  series  of  events  put  Turkey  out  of  the  war. 
The  preceding  year  a  small  British  expedition  from  India 
had  worked  its  way  up  the  Tigris  to  Bagdad ;  and  another 
from  Egypt  had  taken  Jerusalem.  Now  this  last  army  had 
finally  been  reinforced,  and  in  September,  in  a  brilliant 
campaign  it  freed  Syria  from  Turkish  rule.  October  30, 
Turkey  surrendered  as  abjectly  as  Bulgaria.  The  Darda 
nelles  were  opened,  and  Constantinople  admitted  an  Allied 
garrison. 

Austria  too  had  dissolved.  After  the  June  repulse  on  the 
Piave,  the  Austrian  army  was  never  fit  for  another  offensive. 
At  home  the  conglomerate  state  was  going  to  Fail  of 
pieces.  Bohemia  on  one  side,  and  Slovenes,  Austria 
Croats,  and  Bosnians  on  the  other,  were  organizing  inde 
pendent  governments  —  with  encouragement  from  America 
and  the  Allies.  Then,  October  24,  Italy  struck  on  the  Piave. 
The  Austrian  army  broke  in  rout.  Austria  called  franti 
cally  for  an  armistice,  and  when  one  was  granted  (Novem 
ber  4)  the  ancient  Hapsburg  Empire  had  vanished.  The 
Emperor  abdicated.  Fugitive  archdukes  and  duchesses 
crowded  Swiss  hotels.  And  each  day  or  two  saw  a  new 
revolutionary  republic  set  up  in  some  part  of  the  former 
Hapsburg  realms. 

Germany  had  begun  to  treat  for  surrender  a  month  earlier, 
but  held  out  a  week  longer.  October  5,  the  German  Chan- 
celor  (now  the  liberal  Prince  Max  of  Baden  who  had  been  a 
severe  critic  of  Germany's  war  policy)  had  asked  President 
Wilson  to  arrange  an  armistice,  offering  to  accept  the  Four 
teen  Points  as  a  basis  for  peace.  The  reply  made  it  plain  that 
America  and  the  Allies  would  not  treat  with  the  old  despotic 
government,  and  that  no  armistice  would  be  granted  at  that 
late  moment  which  did  not  secure  to  the  Allies  fully  the  fruits 
of  their  military  advantages  in  the  field.  Meantime  the 
fighting  went  on,  with  terrific  losses  on  both  sides.  The 
French  and  Americans,  pushing  north  in  the  Argonne  and 
across  the  Meuse,  were  threatening  the  trunk  railway  at 


730  AMERICA  AND   THE   WAR 

Sedan,  the  only  road  open  for  German  retreat  except  the  one 
through  Belgium.  The  British  and  Belgians  pushed  the  dis 
couraged  invaders  out  of  northern  France  and  out  of  a  large 
part  of  Belgium.  The  pursuit  at  every  point  was  so  hot  that 
retreat  had  to  be  foot  by  foot,  or  in  complete  rout.  As  a  last 
desperate  throw,  the  German  warlords  ordered  the  Kiel  fleet 
to  sea,  to  engage  the  English  navy ;  but  the  common  sailors, 
long  on  the  verge  of  mutiny,  broke  into  open  revolt,  while 
everywhere  the  Extreme  Socialists  —  all  along  opposed  to  the 
war  —  were  openly  preparing  revolution. 

Late  in  October  the  War  Council  of  the  Allies  made 
known  to  Germany  the  terms  upon  which  she  could  have 
Fail  of  an  armistice  preliminary  to  the  drafting  of  a 

Germany  peace  treaty.  Germany  could  save  her  army 
from  destruction,  and  her  territory  would  not  suffer 
hostile  conquest.  But  she  was  to  surrender  at  once 
Alsace-Lorraine,  and  to  withdraw  her  troops  everywhere 
across  the  Rhine,  leaving  the  Allies  in  possession  of  a 
broad  belt  of  German  territory.  She  was  to  surrender 
practically  all  her  fleet,  most  of  her  heavy  artillery,  her  air 
craft,  and  her  railway  engines.  Likewise  she  was  at  once 
to  release  all  prisoners,  though  her  own  were  to  remain  in 
the  hands  of  the  Allies.  In  March,  Germany  had  treacher 
ously  and  arrogantly  set  her  foot  upon  the  neck  of  prostrate 
Russia  in  the  Brest-Litovsk  treaty  :  November  11,  she  made 
this  unconditional  surrender  to  whatever  further  condi 
tions  the  Allies  might  impose  in  the  final  settlement  — 
though  they  did  pledge  themselves  to  base  their  terms, 
with  certain  reservations,  upon  Mr.  Wilson's  Fourteen  Points. 

Germany  had  already  collapsed  internally.  None  of  the 
revolutionary  risings  could  be  put  down ;  and  November  7, 
Bavaria  deposed  her  king  and  proclaimed  herself  a  republic. 
In  Berlin  the  Moderate  Socialists  seized  the  government. 
State  after  state  followed.  November  9,  the  Kaiser  fled  to 
Holland,  whence  he  soon  sent  his  formal  abdication.  Ger 
man  autocracy  and  militarism  had  fallen. 


CHAPTER   XLV 

THE   PEACE    AND    THE   WORLD    LEAGUE 

JANUARY  18,  1919,  in  the  ancient  palace  of  French  kings  at 
Versailles,  where  the  fallen  German  Empire  had  been  first 
proclaimed  just  forty-eight  years  before,  the  Peace  Congress 
met  to  reconstruct  the  world.  The  government  that  had 
precipitated  the  great  war  had  been  crushed :  it  remained 
to  see  whether  the  world  had  been  chastened  by  its  suffering 
so  that  it  would  strive  in  earnest  to  remove  fundamental 
causes  of  war.  There  was  a  chance  such  as  had  never  been 
before  —  and  there  was  supreme  need. 

Eight  out  of  every  nine  men  on  the  globe  had  belonged  to 
the  warring  governments.  Fifty-nine  millions  had  been 
under  arms  —  nearly  all  the  physically  fit  of  the  cost  of  the 
world's  leading  peoples.  These  had  suffered  thirty-  war 
three  million  casualties,  of  which  some  fourteen  millions1 
were  death  or  worse,  besides  the  incalculable  number  of 
enfeebled  and  vitiated  constitutions.  Hardly  less  numerous 
(though  less  accurately  counted)  were  the  victims  of  famine 
and  pestilence  among  civilian  populations.  Nor  does  the  loss 
to  one  generation  begin  to  tell  the  story.  In  all  the  warring 
countries  the  birth  rate  has  declined  alarmingly,  and  the 
human  quality  has  deteriorated.  A  vast  part  of  the 
world's  choicest  youth  were  cut  down  before  marriage, 
while  the  civilian  deaths  and  enfeeblement  were  very  largely 
among  child-bearing  mothers  and  young  children.  As  to 
material  wealth,  a  huge  portion  of  all  that  the  world  had 
been  slowly  storing  up  for  generations  was  gone,  and  over 
wide  areas  all  machinery  for  producing  wealth  was  in  ruins, 

1  Nearly  eight  million  deaths,  and  more  than  six  million  cases  of  irremediable 
mutilation  and  physical  ruin. 

731 


732  THE  PEACE  CONGRESS   OF   1919 

while  future  generations  were  mortgaged  to  pay  the  war 
debt.  The  moral  losses  were  beyond  words  —  sickening  to 
the  imagination,  and  war  enthusiasm  was  replaced  by  pro 
found  discouragement  or  cynicism. 

Politically  alone  the  situation  was  grave  indeed.  All 
Central  Europe,  broken  in  fragments,  was  tossing  on  wave 
after  wave  of  revolution. 

1.  In  Germany,  extreme  Socialists  of  the  Bolshevist  type 
had   seized   control  in  many   districts  —  as   in  Berlin   and 

Munich  — until  finally  overthrown,  in  the  bloodiest 
of  street  fighting,  by  momentary  union  of  all  other 
classes  from  Junker  to  Moderate  Socialist.  In  the  first  quiet 
interval,  it  is  true,  a  National  Assembly  had  been  elected ; 
and,  while  waiting  for  the  Allies  to  dictate  terms  of  peace,  that 
body  drew  up  a  constitution,  which,  quickly  ratified  by  a 
universal  franchise  vote,  turned  the  old  Empire  into  a 
democratic  federal  republic  —  imperiled,  to  be  sure,  by 
incessant  plots  from  both  reactionaries  and  radical  ex 
tremists. 

2.  In    the    former    Austrian    Empire    a    like    chaos    was 
intensified    by   the   dissolution   of   even   the  old   territorial 

arrangements.     The   German   district,  just   about 

The  old  TT.  ,    ,  i  T         i      1    •.  i 

Austrian        Vienna,  had  become  a  republic;  but  its  natural 
Empire  dis-  an(j  proper  desire  to  join  itself  to  Germany  was 
forbidden   by  the  Allies  because  they  were   un 
willing  that  Germany  should  be  so  strengthened.     Accord 
ingly   the   seven    million    people    crowded    into    this    little 
region-    "a    capital    without    a    country"    and    a    people 
without  ports  or  mines  or  any  other  industrial   resources 
-dragged  out  the  next  years  in  famine  relieved  only  by 
meager  charity. 

Hungary,  stripped  of  all  its  non-Magyar  districts,  had 
also  become  a  little  inland  republic,  and  its  nine  million 
disarmed  and  starving  people  were  ravaged  for  months  by 
revengeful  Roumanian  invaders.  Farther  north,  an  en 
larged  and  free  Bohemia  (the  Czecho-Slovak  Republic)  was 
practically  at  war  for  months,  not  merely  with  Germany 


CONDITIONS  IN  EUROPE  733 

and  Austria  but  also  with  the  new  Poland,  over  conflicting 
claims  of  territory. 

3.  The  aristocratic  Polish  Republic  had  other  contests 
with  Russian  Bolshevists  on  the  east  and  with  Germany 
on   the  west,   besides  being  torn   by  proletarian  Poland. 
risings   and   Jewish   pogroms.     And   Poland   was  New   Baltic 
only  one  of  six  new  states,  all  in  like  anarchy,  state 
that  had   split  off    from   the  old   Russia   on   the    western 
frontier    alone,  —  Finland,    Esthonia,    Latvia,    Lithuania, 
Ukrainia. 

4.  To  the  south  of  the  old  Austrian  realms,  there  had 
appeared  a  Jugo-Slav  state,  by  the  long-sought  union  of 
Serbians    with    former    Austrian    Bosnians,    Cro-  The  jugo- 
atians,  and  Slovenes ;   and  this  "  Greater  Serbia  "   Slav  state 
was  in  battle  array  against  Italy,  in  daily  peril  of  war,  over 
the  Adriatic  coast.     Italy  likewise  was  at  daggers  drawn 
with  Greece  over  Albania,  the  islands  of  the  Aegean,  and  the 
shores  of  Asia  Minor.     And  of  all  these  countries,  new  or 
old,  no  one  felt  any  trust  in  the  honor  of  any  other.     Each 
believed  that  every  one  would  hold  what  it  could  lay  hand 
on  —  and  so  sought  to  lay  its  own  hands  on  as  much  as 
possible  before  the  settlement. 

The  Peace  Congress  was  made  up  of  delegations  from 
the  twenty-three  Allied  governments,  with  five  more  from 
England's  colonies,  —  Canada,  Australia,  South  The  Peace 
Africa,  India,  and  New  Zealand.  Each  dele-  Congress 
gation  had  one  vote.  Countries  that  had  been  neutral  were 
invited  to  send  representatives  to  be  called  in  whenever 
matters  arose  that  specially  concerned  them.  The  four 
"  enemy  countries "  and  Russia  were  allowed  no  part. 
A  striking  feature  of  the  gathering  was  the  great  number 
of  expert  assistants  present.  The  United  States  delegation 
alone  was  aided  by  more  than  a  hundred  eminent  American 
authorities  on  the  history  or  geography  or  economic  re 
sources  of  European  lands. 

President    Wilson    himself    headed    the    American    dele 
gation,    in    spite    of    vehement    opposition    (partly  honest, 


734  THE  PEACE  CONGRESS  OF  1919 

partly  partisan)  to  his  leaving  his  own  country.  In  like 
manner,  Lloyd  George  and  Orlando,  the  English  and  Italian 
Woodrow  premiers,  represented  their  lands ;  and  Clemen- 
Wilson  at  ceau,  head  of  the  French  delegation,  was  natu 
rally  chosen  president  of  the  Assembly.  These 
men  made  up  the  "Big  Four."  Part  of  the  time  this  inner 
circle  became  the  "  Big  Five "  by  the  inclusion  of  the 
Japanese  representative. 

From  the  first  there  were  critical  differences  within  the 
Big  Four.  Mr.  Wilson  had  promised  the  world,  Germany 
included,  "  a  permanent  peace  based  on  unselfish,  unbiased 
justice,"  and  "  a  new  international  order  based  upon  broad 
universal  principles  of  right."  To  such  ends  he  insisted, 
(1)  that  the  first  step  must  be  the  organization  of  a  League 
of  Nations,  a  world  federation ;  and  (2)  that  all  negotia 
tions  should  be  public  —  "  open  covenants,  openly  arrived 
at." 

At  times,  Lloyd  George,  too,  had  seemed  in  sympathy 
with  "  a  peace  of  reconciliation "  ;  but  he  was  seriously 
Lloyd  hampered  by  the  fact  that  in  the  campaign  for 

Clemen- ani  parliamentary  elections,  in  December,  he  had 
ceau  won  by  appeals  to  the  worst  war  passions  of  the 

English  people,  throwing  aside  recklessly  his  pledges  of  a 
year  before  (page  723).  The  other  leaders  never  had  any 
real  faith  in  the  Wilson  program.  In  Clemenceau's  words, 
they  thought  President  Wilson  a  benevolent  dreamer  of 
Utopias,  and  preferred  to  rest  all  rearrangements  upon  the 
old  European  methods  of  rival  alliances  to  maintain  a 
balance  of  power  —  a  plan  which  had  been  tried  through 
bloody  centuries. 

Moreover  the  French  statesmen  looked  both  vengefully 
and  with  alarm  upon  Germany,  which,  though  prostrate 
Govern-  for  the  moment,  still  bordered  upon  them  with  a 
peoples  hi  population  and  resources  greater  than  their  own. 
Europe  With  war  passions  still  hot,  and  war  memories 
fresh,  they  wished  above  all  things  to  deal  with  Germany 
by  summary  methods,  to  make  her  helpless  by  dismember 
ing  her  and  by  plundering  her  through  indemnities,  and  to 


AND  WOODROW  WILSON  735 

give  to  the  new  Poland  and  Bohemia  enough  German 
territory  so  that  those  countries  might  always  fear  attack 
by  Germany,  and  therefore  be  hostile  to  her.  With  such 
states  on  the  east,  dependent  upon  France  for  safety,  Ger 
many  would  be  held  in  a  vise  —  especially  if  the  proposed 
League  of  Nations  could  be  made  a  cover  for  a  guarantee 
of  the  arrangements  by  America  and  England.1 

But  such  a  program  meant  the  perpetuation  of  the  old 
European  system  of  alliances,  armed  camps,  and  sooner,  or 
later,  of  war.  And  by  the  war-weary  peoples,  the  Mr.  Wilson 
Wilson  program  of  a  just  peace  and  a  world  by  Events  at 
league  was  at  first  hailed  with  joy.  Mr.  Wilson  home 
had  arrived  in  Europe  several  weeks  before  the  opening  of 
the  Congress,  for  conferences  with  European  statesmen ; 
and  everywhere  in  his  journey  —  in  England,  France, 
Italy  —  he  was  welcomed  by  the  working  classes  with 
remarkable  demonstrations  of  respect  and  affection,  as 
"  the  president  of  all  of  us,"  and  as  the  apostle  of  world 
peace  and  of  human  brotherhood.  For  a  time  it  seemed 
possible  that  he  might,  at  a  crisis,  override  the  hostile 
attitude  of  the  governments  by  appealing  to  the  people 
themselves ;  and  indeed  in  a  great  speech  at  Milan  —  just 
after  some  slurring  attacks  upon  him  by  French  statesmen 
-  he  hinted  pointedly  at  such  a  program.  Unhappily,  as 
months  passed  in  wearisome  negotiations,  this  fervor  wasted 
away,  and  in  each  nation  bitter  popular  animosities  began 
to  show  toward  neighboring  and  allied  peoples.  Moreover 
Mr.  Wilson's  power  in  Europe  had  been  weakened  by  events 
at  home.  Late  in  the  campaign  for  the  new  Congressional 
elections  in  the  preceding  November,  he  had  made  an  appeal 
to  the  country  for  indorsement  of  his  policies  by  a  Demo 
cratic  victory.  The  elections  gave  both  Houses  instead  to 
the  Republicans;  and  the  jubilant  victors,  charging  venge- 
fully  that  the  President  had  set  an  example  of  political 
partisanship,  entered  upon  a  bitter  course  of  criticism  and 

1  There  is  an  admirable  explanation  of  French  feeling,  an  explanation  tempered 
with  charitable  regret,  in  "  The  Malady  of  Europe  "  by  Philip  Gibbs,  the  great 
English  war  correspondent,  in  Harpers'  Magazine,  February,  1921. 


736  THE  PEACE  CONGRESS  OF  1919 

obstruction  —  of  which  Mr.  Wilson's  European  opponents 
made  the  most. 

The  first  defeat  at  Paris  was  in  the  matter  of  secret 
negotiation.  To  save  time,  it  was  necessary  no  doubt 
Secret  ne-  for  the  Peace  Congress  to  do  most  of  its  work  in 
gotiations  sman  committees.  But  it  would  have  been 
possible  to  lessen  bargaining  and  intrigue  by  having  such 
meetings  open  to  representatives  of  the  press,  or  by  publish 
ing  stenographic  reports.  Mr.  Wilson,  however,  allowed 
the  Old  World  diplomats  —  with  their  tradition  of  back- 
stair  intrigue  —  to  persuade  him  into  consenting  to  only 
one  public  and  general  meeting  each  week.  The  result 
was  that,  from  the  first,  the  real  work  was  done  by  the 
inner  circle  of  four  or  five  in  secret  conclave  (with  the 
addition  of  several  advisory  secret  committees  on  special 
matters).  Indeed,  instead  of  even  the  promised  open 
meeting  once  a  week  there  were  during  the  entire  five  months 
to  the  signing  of  the  peace  with  Germany  (January  18- June 
28)  only  six  open  meetings  —  and  these  merely  to  ratify 
conclusions  arrived  at  by  the  Big  Four. 

The  next  point  Mr.  Wilson  won.  It  was  agreed  that  the 
first  business  of  the  Congress  should  be  to  provide  a  League 
Agreement  °^  Nations.  Many  voices,  especially  in  France 
for  a  League  and  in  the  United  States  Senate,  had  been  raised 
in  protest,  urging  that  a  league  should  come  only 
after  a  treaty  of  peace.  Some  of  these  objectors  were 
honest :  some  used  the  objection  as  a  means  to  defeat  any 
real  league.  But  Mr.  Wilson  argued  that  the  league  would 
expedite,  not  hinder,  the  peace  treaty,  since  it  was  a  necessary 
prelude  to  any  right  sort  of  peace.  With  such  a  guarantee 
of  peace,  such  a  league  to  secure  disarmament  and  to  punish 
any  bully  or  robber  state,  it  was  hoped  that  France  and 
Italy  might  trust  to  a  just  and  merciful  peace,  instead  of 
insisting  upon  vengeance  and  booty. 

But  while  a  committee  of  fourteen  nations,  headed  by 
Mr.  Wilson,  was  preparing  the  constitution  of  the  league, 
dark  rumors  crept  out  regarding  the  plans  of  European 
statesmen  for  spoils.  France  talked  of  the  necessity  that 


JUSTICE  OR  BOOTY  ?  737 

she  acquire  all  German  territory  west  of  the  Rhine,  her 
"natural  frontier,"  so  that  in  future  wars  that  great  river 
might  serve  as  a  protective  ditch.  Marshal  Foch  spoils  or 
supported  this  plea  for  military  reasons  ;  and  it  de-  Justice 
veloped  that  a  secret  agreement  between  France  and  Russia 
at  the  beginning  of  the  war  had  provided  for  such  an 
arrangement.  But  this  would  have  transferred  several 
millions  of  unwilling  Germans  to  French  rule;  and  Mr. 
Wilson,  as  recognized  spokesman  for  the  Allies  at  the 
Armistice  and  in  earlier  negotiations  with  Germany,  had 
repeatedly  renounced  the  principle  of  forcible  annexation 
either  to  punish  a  foe  or  to  secure  " strategic  frontiers"  -  or 
for  any  purpose  except  to  satisfy  the  just  claims  of  oppressed 
nationalities.  To  grant  this  French  claim  would  have  been 
the  grossest  of  bad  faith,  as  well  as  one  more  continuation 
of  the  discredited  policy  of  the  old  Congress  of  Vienna  a 
century  before. 

Italy,  too,  demanded,  and  received,  not  only  the  Italian 
populations  of  the  Trentino,  formerly  held  by  Austria,  but 
also  a  needless  "  strategic  frontier"  against  now  The  Flume 
helpless  Austria,  involving  the  annexation  of  a  incident 
purely  German  district  in  the  Brenner  Pass  of  the  Alps  with 
a  quarter  of  a  million  inhabitants.  Italy  also  advanced 
claims  on  the  Adriatic  at  the  expense  of  the  new  South 
Slav  state,  and  it  became  plain  that  the  imperfectly  known 
"secret  treaties,"  under  which  Italy  and  Japan  had  entered 
the  war,  had  provided  for  a  far-reaching  division  of  spoils. 
Enough  news  leaked  out  from  the  private  conclaves  to  make 
it  certain  that  President  Wilson  denounced  these  projects 
and  declared  he  would  have  no  part  in  a  "  Congress  for 
booty."  At  one  time,  indeed,  when  the  Italian  delegates 
insisted  strenuously  upon  Croatian  Fiume  (the  natural  door 
of  the  South  Slavs  to  the  Adriatic),  he  cabled  to  America 
for  his  ship  —  and  this  particular  act  of  plunder  was  avoided, 
even  though  Orlando  did  for  a  while  leave  the  Congress  in 
protest.  But  Mr.  Wilson  could  not  resort  often  to  so 
extreme  a  method.  Victory  over  Fiume  was  followed  by 
defeat  over  Shantung  (page  741),  while  the  French  demand 


738  THE  LEAGUE  OF  NATIONS 

for  the  Rhine  became  a  trading  pretext  for  granting  her  the 
Saar  Valley.  At  our  entrance  into  the  war,  America  had 
stipulated  for  no  material  gain  for  herself.  This  was  well. 
But  even  then  it  was  known  that  the  Allies  had  made  various 
secret  agreements  for  the  division  of  booty.  It  did  not  occur 
to  any  one  at  the  time,  but  future  difficulties  would  have 
been  avoided  if  upon  entering  the  war  America  had  de 
manded  the  cancellation  of  all  secret  treaties  as  the  price 
of  her  aid. 

In  March,  while  other  negotiations  were  progressing,  the 
committee  on  the  League  of  Nations  made  its  report. 
The  Cove-  Loud  opposition  was  voiced  at  once  in  the  United 
nant  of  the  States  Senate  where  Republican  leaders  strove 
League  openly  to  make  acceptance  or  rejection  a  party 
question ;  and  after  a  few  weeks  the  Peace  Congress  revised 
the  document  slightly.  The  revised  Covenant  is  clear  and 
brief.  The  union  is  very  loose,  and  its  managing  bodies 
are  not  really  a  government.  "Charter  membership"  was 
offered  to  forty-five  nations  (including  all  organized  govern 
ments  except  Russia,  the  four  "enemy  countries,"  and  Costa 
Rica,  San  Domingo,  and  Mexico).  Amendments  and 
admission  of  new  members  require  the  unanimous  consent 
of  the  five  big  states  with  a  majority  of  all  states;  and  for 
any  other  action  of  consequence,  the  unanimous  consent  of 
all  nations  in  the  League  is  demanded,  except  that  no  party 
to  a  dispute  has  a  voice  in  its  settlement.  Among  the  most 
valuable  provisions  of  the  Covenant  are  the  prohibition 
of  all  secret  treaties  in  future,  and  the  clauses  providing 
for  disarmament  (though  only  by  unanimous  agreement), 
for  regulation  of  the  manufacture  of  munitions  of  war,  for 
compulsory  arbitration,  and  for  delay  in  recourse  to  war 
even  if  an  arbitration  is  unsatisfactory.  A  reservation  of 
the  Monroe  Doctrine,  inserted  in  the  second  draft  as  a  sop 
to  American  opposition,  suggests,  by  its  unfortunate  phras 
ing,  a  continuation  of  the  pernicious  doctrine  of  "  spheres  of 
influence"  -pleasing  to  Japanese  as  well  as  to  American 
Jingoes  —  and  satisfies  neither  advocates  nor  opponents 
of  the  League.  Much  debated,  too,  is  Article  X,  which 


THE  PEACE  WITH  GERMANY  739 

guarantees  to  each  state  its  territorial  integrity  against 
external  attack.  In  the  present  form,  it  is  feared  by  some, 
the  Article  may  be  an  insurmountable  barrier  to  needed 
readjustments;  while  other  critics  object  that  America, 
if  a  member  of  the  League,  might  have  to  send  an  army  to 
defend  European  states  in  ill-gotten  gains. 

The  value  of  such  a  league  must  depend  upon  the  spirit 
in  which  it  is  worked  ;    and,  at  the  best,  any  one  large  state 
might  block  all  wholesome  action.     Meanwhile,  to  The  Ger- 
secure  a  league  at  all,  Mr.  Wilson  compromised  man  treaty 
many  of  his  principles  in  the  making  of  the  peace  treaties, 
until,  some  of  his  opponents  feel,  those  treaties  themselves 
may  make  a  beneficent  working  of  the  League  very  difficult. 
June  28,  the  treaty  of  peace  with  Germany  was  signed  by 
the  helpless  German  delegates,  who  had  been  summoned 
to  Paris  for  the  purpose.     The  treaty  makes  a  good-sized 
book.     A   typical  provision   relates   to  the  Saar  The  Saar 
Valley,  a  small  strip  of  German  territory  just  east  Valley 
of  Alsace.     Germany  cedes  the  rich  coal  mines  of  this  region 
to  France,  in  rightful  reparation  of  her  wanton  destruction 
of  French  coal  mines.     France  insisted  long  upon  political 
sovereignty  over  the  territory  and  people,  along  with  this 
property.    This  claim  was  not  directly  granted  ;  but  a  "  com 
promise  "  places  the  valley  for  fifteen  years  under  an  Inter 
national  Commission.    At  the  end  of  that  time  the  inhabitants 
are  to  vote  whether  they  will  return  to  Germany  or  join  France. 
If  they  decide  for  their  own  country,  Germany  «Veiled 
must  at  once  buy  up  France's  claim  to  the  coal  annexa- 
mines.     This  may  be  impossible  for  her  to  do ;  * 
but  if  she  fails  to  do  it,  the  territory  passes  permanently  to 
France. 

This  "veiled  annexation"  of  half  a  million  Germans  to 
a  foreign  power,  against  their  will,  is  in  sharp  defiance  of 
the  principle  of  "self-determination,"  —and  it  was  wholly 
unnecessary.  France  ought  to  have  the  coal ;  but  title 
to  that  could  have  been  guaranteed  safely  without  this 
transfer  of  political  allegiance.  And  the  Saar  Valley  ar- 


740  THE  PEACE  CONGRESS  OF  1919 

rangement  is  merely  one  of  several  like  or  worse  arrange 
ments.  The  new  Poland  got  not  merely  the  Polish  territory 
Silesia  and  long  held  by  Prussia,  to  which  she  is  entitled, 
Dantzig  DUt  ajso  large  strips  of  German  territory,  like 
Upper  Silesia  (with  its  two  million  people),  which  she  wants 
because  of  its  mines.  Moreover,  in  order  to  give  Poland 
easy  access  to  the  sea,  by  the  route  of  the  Vistula,  German 
Dantzig  was  made  a  "free"  city,  against  its  will,  with  added 
roundabout  arrangements  that  leave  it  largely  subject  to 
Poland.  Still  further,  Germany  very  properly  not  only 
returns  Alsace-Lorraine  to  France  and  (with  a  favorable 
vote  of  the  inhabitants)  Danish  Sleswig  l  to  Denmark,  but 
also  cedes  to  Belgium  three  small  pieces  of  territory  popu 
lated  mainly  by  people  of  Belgian  blood,  and  to  Czecho 
slovakia  valuable  mining  districts  of  Silesia.  Subject  to 
plebiscite,  she  was  also  to  cede  to  Poland  considerable 
territory  east  of  the  Vistula,  but  here  the  vote  went  for 
Germany.  (The  fate  of  much  of  Silesia  was  to  be  de 
cided  by  a  plebiscite  in  1921.)  In  all,  about  a  fifth  of  old 
Germany  is  gone.  Even  this  is  not  enough  to  satisfy  the 
French  government ;  and  various  attempts  have  been 
fomented  by  French  agents  to  induce  the  Rhine  provinces 
of  Germany  to  secede  and  form  a  separate  state  —  after 
which  it  would  perhaps  be  possible  to  establish  French  con 
trol  over  them. 

Outside  Europe,  Germany  has  lost  her  vast  colonial 
empire.  But,  instead  of  being  placed  under  the  guardian- 
The  old  sniP  °f  tne  League  of  Nations  until  they  can  walk 
colonies  of  alone,  the  former  German  colonies  are  turned  over 
any  as  plunder  to  the  Allies.  Those  in  the  Pacific  have 
gone  part  to  England,  part  to  Japan,  according  to  the  terms 
of  a  secret  treaty  of  1914  between  those  countries.  True, 
England  and  Japan  are  "mandatories"  of  the  League  of 
Nations ;  but  that  vague  arrangement  is  little  more  than 
a  screen  for  the  division  of  spoils  —  and  Japan  surely  has 

1  Sleswig  was  divided,  for  the  plebiscite,  into  three  zones.  Denmark  declined 
the  southern  one  as  not  Danish  in  blood ;  the  northern  voted  overwhelmingly  for 
annexation ;  the  middle  one  voted  as  decisively  to  remain  German  (1920). 


IMPERIALISM  VICTORIOUS  741 

shown  herself  (in  Korea)  as  unfit  to  rule  subject  peoples 
as  ever  Germany  was.  German  Africa,  too,  has  been 
divided  between  France,  Belgium,  and  England,  with 
hardly  a  pretext  of  even  the  mandatory  screen. 

In  like  manner,  in  the  somewhat  later  Turkish  treaties, 
the  settlement  was  a  frank  surrender  to  arrogant  imperialism, 
British  and  French,  —  France  taking  the  long  coveted  parts 
of  Syria,  in  spite  of  Syrian  protest,  and  England  taking  Meso 
potamia  with  its  oil  wealth.  In  this  connection  Americans 
are  especially  chagrined  that  Japan  succeeds  also  to  all 
Germany's  "rights"  in  Shantung,  with  its  forty  The  Shan- 
million  people,  against  the  futile  protest  of  China.  tung  matter 
True,  'Japan  has  promised  that  her  political  occupation 
shall  be  "temporary";  but  that  word  has  been  used  too 
often  as  a  prelude  to  permanent  grabs  of  territory.  To  allow 
the  one  remaining  despotic  and  military  power  in  the  world 
so  to  seize  the  door  to  China  was  not  merely  to  betray  a 
faithful  ally,  but  also  to  renounce  a  plain  and  wise  American 
policy  in  the  Orient. 

More  objectionable  still  are  the  economic  provisions  of 
the  treaties.  Germany  was  to  pay  fixed  reparations  amount 
ing  to  30  billions  of  dollars  during  the  years  The  huge 
1920-1934  (at  least  twice  as  much  as  most  expert  Stta-**" 
judges  believe  she  will  be  able  to  pay)  and  also  demnity 
other  indefinite  amounts,  to  be  fixed  in  future  by  a  com 
mission  of  her  conquerors.  Other  vicious  economic  pro 
visions,  too  complicated  for  statement  here,  hamper 
Germany's  industries  so  that  she  cannot  begin  earning  any 
thing  to  pay  with.  Critics  wonder  whether  France  igno- 
rantly  overreached  herself  —  asking  so  much  that  she  will 
get  far  less  than  she  might  have  had  —  or  whether  she 
shrewdly  demanded  the  impossible  in  order  to  make  failure 
in  this  an  excuse  for  seizing  permanently  upon  more  German 
territory.  (February  1,  1921,  the  Allied  Council  restated  the 
indemnity  —  in  more  definite  but  hardly  more  reasonable 
terms  —  at  56  billion  dollars,  to  be  paid  in  42  annual  pay 
ments,  with  an  additional  12  per  cent  tax  on  all  exports  to 
strangle  German  trade.) 


742  THE  PEACE  CONGRESS  OF  1919 

The  American  delegation  opposed  practically  all  these 
objectionable  provisions,  —  and  did  prevent  the  insertion 
Criticism  of  of  others  as  bad.  But,  on  the  whole,  Mr.  Wilson 
the  treaty  proved  unable  to  cope  with  the  combined  Old 
World  diplomats.  The  Fourteen  Points  had  been  pledged 
as  a  basis  for  peace ;  but  it  is  difficult  to  trace  in  the  treaty 
their  general  spirit  or  many  of  their  specific  provisions.  Some 
of  the  experts  attached  to  the  American  Commission  resigned 
their  positions  in  protest;  and  General  Smuts,  the  hero  of 
South  Africa,  declared  in  a  formal  statement  that  he  signed 
the  treaty  for  his  country  only  because  of  the  absolute 
necessity  of  immediate  peace  for  Europe,  and  because  he 
hoped  that  the  worst  provisions  might  be  modified  later 
by  the  League  of  Nations.  Many  progressive  thinkers, 
the  world  over,  believe  the  treaty  dishonorable  to  the 
Allies  because  it  contradicts  solemn  pledges,  and  bad  for 
the  world  at  large  because  (with  the  other  treaties  that 
followed)  it  leaves  a  hundred  million  people  in  Central 
Europe  industrially  enslaved  and  with  no  real  hope  except 
in  some  future  war  of  revenge,  and  so  breaks  faith  not  alone 
with  the  beaten  foe  but  also  with  the  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  splendid  youth  who  gave  their  lives  in  torment  to  win 
a  war  that  should  end  war.  With  biting  sarcasm,  one 
cartoon  represents  Clemenceau  rising  from  the  Peace  table 
with  the  words,  —  "  Well,  first  we  made  a  war  to  end  war, 
and  now  we  have  made  a  peace  to  end  peace." 

Whether  or  not  we  judge  so  sternly,  whether  we  blame 
individual  statesmen  or  merely  the  common  weakness  of 
human  nature,  it  is  indisputable  that  the  Peace  Congress 
failed  to  rise  to  the  high  level  of  its  obligation  —  measured 
by  its  opportunity.  Such  opportunity,  unplanned,  will 
not  come  again ;  it  will  have  to  be  manufactured.  With 
the  United  States  (page  756),  Germany,  Russia,  and  several 
small  states  still  outside,  the  League  of  Nations  held  its  first 
meeting,  December- January,  1920-1921.  That  gathering, 
naturally  enough,  proved  little  more  than  a  barren  conference 
of  ambassadors  from  members  of  a  powerful  European 
alliance.  Such  generous  tendencies  as  showed  themselves 


AND  BOLSHEVIST  RUSSIA  743 

came  from  small  states,  unable  in  that  gathering  to  give 
them  weight ;  and  a  mild  suggestion  that  "  mandatories  " 
should  be  administered  for  the  common  good  met  with 
prompt  defiance  by  the  large  powers.  Meantime  in  every 
great  state,  including  America,  chemists,  engineers,  military 
men,  in  laboratories  and  in  councils,  are  seeking  more 
poisonous  gases,  inventing  bigger  airships  and  larger  guns 
and  deadlier  explosives,  planning  huger  navies,  while  other 
scientists  are  prophesying  even  viler  but  highly  probable 
things  —  as  that  the  next  war  will  be  a  contest  in  scattering 
hideous  disease  germs  from  aerial  navies  over  whole  con 
tinents  to  destroy  entire  populations.  And  just  as  in  1914, 
only  somewhat  differently  shuffled,  the  materials  are  heaped 
for  a  world  war.  Unless  soon  a  true  world  federation  is 
achieved,  to  secure  disarmament  and  to  adjust  economic 
conflicts  righteously,  some  hand  will  apply  the  torch. 

And  yet  a  great  gain  lives.  If  the  world  at  last  find 
salvation  instead  of  destruction,  it  will  be  largely  due  to 
one  man's  work.  What  had  been  a  nebulous  vision  of 
fantastic  dreamers,  that  man  made  the  question  of  practical 
politics.  Those  critics  of  Woodrow  Wilson  who  most 
sincerely  mourn  his  "  failure,"  know  that  men  would  not 
feel  that  he  has  failed  if  he  had  not  made  the  goal  so  clear. 
The  shining  mark  to  which  he  turned  the  world's  hope  is  not 
achieved  —  but  it  is  not  forgotten. 

Before  we  turn  back  to  American  domestic  problems,  one 
more  European  matter  claims   attention.     For  two  years 
after  Germany's  fall,  the  Allies  continued  a  mis-  The  Allies 
taken  policy  toward  Russia.     In  all  Allied  lands  and  the 
there  was  intense  feeling  against  the  Bolshevist  I 
government.     This   was   due  partly   to   popular   ignorance 
(caused  largely  by  a  rigid  censorship  of  Russian  news  by  the 
Allied  governments,  and  intensified  by  a  frantic  propaganda 
of  falsehood  directed  by  agents  of  the  dispossessed  aristo 
crats),  partly  to  a  delusion  that  the  Bolshevists  were  tools 
of   Germany,   and   partly   to   real   evils  in   the  Bolshevist 
scheme. 


744  THE  PEACE  CONGRESS  OF  1919 

After  the  fall  of  the  Tsar,  society  in  Russia  collapsed. 
Criminals,  singly  or  in  bands,  worked  their  will,  unchecked 
TheBoishe-  bv  anv  government,  in  robbery,  outrage,  and 
vists  restore  murder,  not  only  in  country  districts  but  even 
in  the  public  streets  of  great  cities.  And  the 
usual  criminal  class  was  reinforced  by  numbers  of  men  made 
desperate  by  hunger.  For  the  cities  were  starving ;  and 
speculators  were  increasing  the  agony  by  hoarding  supplies 
to  sell  secretly  to  the  rich  at  huge  profits.  Absurdly 
enough,  our  papers,  especially  in  their  cartoons,  ascribed 
all  this  to  the  Bolshevists  —  who  in  reality  put  it  down. 
Kerensky  had  proved  utterly  unable  to  grapple  with  the 
situation ;  but  when  the  Bolshevists  came  to  power,  they 
shot  the  bandits  in  batches,  and  meted  out  like  swift 
punishment  to  "  forestallers  "  of  food.  In  such  summary 
proceedings,  many  innocent  persons  must  have  suffered 
along  with  the  guilty ;  but  at  least  Russia  was  saved  from 
reverting  to  savagery.  In  a  few  weeks,  order  and  quiet 
were  restored ;  the  available  food  was  "  rationed  "  rigidly 
(somewhat  as  in  England  during  the  war)  with  particular 
care  for  children  of  all  classes ;  and  private  crime  became  less 
than  Russia  had  ever  known.  All  this  parallels  the  story 
of  the  French  Revolution  just  after  the  fall  of  the  Bastille, 
except  that  in  Russia  the  task  was  infinitely  harder  and  was 
performed,  not  by  an  organized  middle  class,  but  by  the 
untrained  Bolshevists. 

At  first  the  new  government  seems  to  have  treated  the  old 
capitalist  class  with  some  consideration  so  far  as  concerns 
The  Red  their  personal  safety.  But  a  little  later,  when 
Terror  ^e  world  was  attacking  Russia  in  open  war,  and 

when  the  dispossessed  Russian  classes  were  carrying  on  a 
campaign  of  secret  assassination  of  Bolshevist  leaders  (and 
had  even  struck  down  Lenin  with  a  dangerous  wound),  the 
Bolshevists  adopted  a  deliberate  policy  of  "  Terror,"  arrest 
ing  and  executing  some  thousands  of  "  aristocrats,"  until 
internal  opposition  was  crushed.  Again  this  parallels  thv, 
story  of  the  French  Revolution,  except  that  the  Russian 
"Terror,"  bloody  as  it  was,  was  shorter  and  less  atrocious 


AND  BOLSHEVIST  RUSSIA  745 

than  the  French.  Certainly  the  misery  caused  by  it,  even 
at  its  worst,  was  less  than  the  misery  caused  in  Russia 
decade  after  decade  by  the  old  tyranny  of  the  Tsars  —  on 
which  the  world  had  looked  with  complacency. 

But  for  the  first  time  in  history  the  Bolshevists  put  into 
actual  operation  a  system  of  extreme  socialism  on  a  large 
scale.  Not  unnaturally,  this  alarmed  and  The  "  dicta- 
angered  the  propertied  classes  everywhere;  and 
an  excuse  for  the  world  to  interfere  was  found  in  tariat" 
the  fact  that  the  thing  had  been  done,  not  by  the  Russian 
people,  but  by  a  "  dictatorship  of  the  proletariat."  Control 
in  Russia  had  been  seized  by  the  small  but  organized  class  of 
town  workers.  The  far  more  numerous  but  unorganized 
and  ignorant  peasantry,  fairly  content  with  the  land  they 
had  been  allowed  to  appropriate,  acquiesced  passively; 
and  the  small  class  of  capitalists  and  "  intellectuals "  was 
tyrannically  suppressed  and  silenced. 

The  Bolshevists  claimed  to  rest  their  rule  on  a  new  principle  of 
citizenship.  Able-bodied  men  and  women  who  do  no  useful  work 
with  hand  or  brain  they  exclude  from  the  political  Denial  of 
franchise  as  social  parasites.  In  their  list  of  useful  free  speech 
workers  they  include  teachers,  actors,  artists,  physicians,  engineers, 
and  industrial  managers,  along  with  all  hand  workers ;  but  they 
exclude  lawyers,  bankers,  and  all  who  live  upon  invested  capital. 
All  recognized  "workers"  are  organized  in  industrial  unions,  and 
representation  in  the  government  is  based  on  these  unions. 
Each  such  union  sends  its  representatives  to  the  soviet  (council) 
of  its  local  district.  This  local  soviet  sends  its  delegates  to  the 
soviet  of  the  next  larger  district ;  and  so  on.  All  delegates  are 
subject  to  recall  at  any  time  by  the  body  that  elected  them. 
In  arranging  the  apportionment,  the  rural  districts  are  given 
a  much  smaller  vote  in  proportion  to  population  than  the  city 
districts. 

By  this  device,  along  with  their  control  over  the  press  and  all 
other  agencies  of  propaganda,  the  Bolshevists  so  far  maintain 
themselves  in  power.  One  of  the  heaviest  indictments  against 
Lenin  and  Trotsky  is  that  they  have  suppressed  all  public  ex 
pression  of  anti-socialist  agitation  in  a  way  wholly  incompatible 
with  free  government. 


746  THE  PEACE  CONGRESS  OF  1919 

The  non-socialist  forces  might  have  recovered  and  com 
bined  so  as  to  overthrow  or  modify  Bolshevism,  had 
Why  Rus-  not  the  Allies  by  a  colossal  and  cruel  blunder 
sianpatri-  identified  that  rule  with  Russian  patriotism, 
t^the™  Instead  of  leaving  the  Bolshevist  theory  to 
Bolshevists  demonstrate  its  failure  in  practice,  the  Allied 
governments  chose  to  combat  it  by  war.  Like  the  "  emi 
grant  "  nobles  who  fled  from  France  at  the  opening  of  her 
Revolution,  so  in  1917  the  fugitive  Russian  courtiers  and 
nobles  levied  war  against  the  new  government  of  their 
country  —  with  foreign  aid.  Kolchak  for  a  time  held  much 
of  Siberia  —  to  be  succeeded  there,  when  he  had  been 
crushed  by  the  Bolshevists,  by  Japanese  invaders ;  Denikin, 
and  afterward  Wrangel,  began  invasion  from  the  Ukraine. 
These  and  other  such  leaders  claimed  flimsily  to  wish 
"  constitutional"  government  for  Russia ;  but  more  and  more 
clearly  their  deeds  proved  a  plot  to  restore  despotism,  and 
their  atrocious  "  White  Terrors "  at  least  equaled  the  ex 
cesses  charged  against  the  Bolshevists.  Meantime  Rou- 
mania,  Poland,  and  the  new  Baltic  countries  made  the 
cordon  about  Russia  complete  except  for  Archangel  on  the 
north  —  and  that  one  opening  to  the  world  was  long  held 
by  an  army  of  12,000  Allies  and  Americans. 

These  troops  had  been  sent  to  Archangel  during  the  last  of 
the  war  against  Germany  to  protect  military  stores  there  from 
America  at  German  seizure ;  but  soon  these  soldiers  who  had 
war  with  enlisted  to  fight  the  Kaiser  were  used,  at  the  be 
hest  of  French  and  English  rulers,  as  an  invading 
army  against  the  new  government  of  Russia  —  a  service 
extremely  hateful  to  great  numbers  of  them.  The  world 
was  told  that  the  Russian  people,  freed  and  encouraged  by 
the  presence  of  such  troops,  would  rally  to  overthrow 
Bolshevist  tyranny.  But  the  Russian  people  rallied  in 
stead  to  the  Bolshevists,  and  the  few  who  at  first  fought 
along  with  the  Allies  deserted  rapidly  to  their  countrymen. 
A  curious  feature  of  the  business  is  that  democratic  America 
found  itself  at  war  with  Russia  for  nearly  two  years  without 
action  by  Congress. 


AND  BOLSHEVIST  RUSSIA  747 

The  "  blockade "  of  Russia  has  virtually  continued  to 
1921.  The  small  Baltic  states,  from  which  she  soon  won 
peace,  had  no  resources  for  trade;  and  though  The 
England  and  America  had  technically  lifted  the  Russian 
blockade  some  months  earlier,  both  continued  to 
refuse  passports  and  even  mail  and  wire  communication 
with  Russia.  This  of  course  absolutely  prevented  trade. 
Meantime  the  lack  of  food  and  of  medical  supplies  —  which 
the  Bolshevist  government  was  eager  to  pay  for  in  gold  — 
has  slain  more  people  (mainly  mothers,  young  babies,  and 
hospital  cases)  than  a  great  war.  The  blockade,  too, 
has  kept  Russia  from  getting  cotton  or  rubber  for  her 
factories,  or  locomotives  for  her  railroads,  or  machinery 
for  her  agriculture;  and  so  it  has  given  the  Bolshevists  a 
plausible  excuse  for  the  slowness  of  their  industrial  revival. 
(The  same  blockade,  like  the  destruction  of  the  German 
market,  has  been  a  factor  in  closing  down  American  in 
dustries  and  in  throwing  American  workmen  out  of  jobs.) 


CHAPTER  XLVI 

THE   NEW   AGE 

THE  United  States  entered  the  war  late,  and  our  borders 
were  remote  from  the  struggle.  We  made  relatively  small 
America's  sacrifice.  Still  eighty  thousand  American  boys 
war  loss  jje  m  French  soil,  and  as  many  more  were  irrep 
arably  maimed.  As  to  money,  aside  from  huge  sums 
raised  by  war  taxes,  our  debt  is  twenty-five  billions,  with 
out  counting  the  ten  billions  that  our  government  bor 
rowed  from  our  people  to  lend  to  England,  France,  and 
Italy.  On  these  loans  the  Allied  countries  will  perhaps  pay 
the  interest  (though  up  to  the  close  of  1920  no  payment 
has  been  made)  and  sometime  possibly  they  will  repay  the 
principal ;  but  on  only  the  remaining  twenty -five  billions 
the  interest  will  each  year  exceed  the  total  yearly  expend 
iture  of  the  government  before  the  war.  This  debt  i? 
ten  times  that  with  which  we  came  out  of  the  Civil  War, 
and  it  equals  all  the  receipts  of  the  Treasury  from  George 
Washington  to  Woodrow  Wilson.  Without  paying  a  cent 
of  the  principal  we  shall  have  to  tax  ourselves  for  our  national 
government  at  least  twice  as  much  as  ever  before. 

But  we  must  also  pay  the  principal.  If  we  do  so  in  one 
generation  (as  probably  we  shall),  that  will  mean  one  billion 
more  of  taxes  a  year.  As  the  principal  is  paid,  the  interest 
will  lessen;  but,  taking  into  account  the  increased  cost  of 
living  for  the  government,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  for  the  next 
twenty -five  years  we  must  raise  at  least  three  billion  dollars  a 
year,  or  three  fourths  as  much  as  in  the  war  years  themselves.1 

1  In  Europe  the  burden  is  terrifying.  The  huge  totals  of  indebtedness  in  France 
and  Germany  have  little  meaning  to  us.  England  has  suffered  less  than  the  con 
tinent,  but  England's  debt  is  enormous.  Merely  to  keep  up  the  interest,  along  with 

748 


ORGANIZED  EFFORT  749 

(For  1920  the  expenditure  has  been  nearly  twice  that  im 
mense  sum.) 

Still  there  is  another  side.  No  war  was  ever  so  hideously 
destructive,  but  neither  did  any  other  ever  give  birth  to  so 
many  healing  and  constructive  forces.  It  is  worth  Healing 
while  to  survey  these  with  view  to  their  utilization  forces 
in  peace.  To  our  surprise  and  to  that  of  the  world,  America 
proved  that  a  great  democracy,  utterly  unready  for  war, 
could  organize  for  war  efficiently  and  swiftly.  The  task  was 
not  merely  to  select  and  train  three  million  soldiers,  but  to 
mobilize  one  hundred  million  people  for  team  work  so  as 
to  utilize  every  resource,  with  harmony  and  intelligence,  in 
producing  and  transporting  supplies  and  supplying  funds. 
The  government  provided  inspiration  and  guidance  through 
eminent  experts  in  all  lines  —  historians,  chemists,  engineers, 
heads  of  great  business  enterprises  —  organized  in  a  variety 
of  war  boards. 

The  Committee  on  Public  Information  created  by  Presi 
dent  Wilson  was  a  new  thing  in  history.  If  a  democracy 
was  to  turn  from  all  its  ordinary  ways  of  living  The  war 
in  order  to  fight  zealously,  it  must  be  posted  boards 
thoroughly  oh  the  danger  that  threatened  it  and  on  the 
needs  of  the  country.  Within  a  few  months,  at  small  ex 
pense,  this  Committee  published  and  circulated  in  every 
village  in  America  more  than  a  hundred  different  pam 
phlets,  brief,  readable,  forceful,  written  by  leading  American 
scholars  and  distributed  literally  by  the  million.  Along 
with  posters  and  placards,  designed  by  America's  foremost 
illustrators  and  distributed  also  by  this  Committee,  these 
publications  did  a  marvelous  work  in  spreading  informa 
tion  and  arousing  will  power  —  demonstrating  that  in  war 
itself  the  pen  is  mightier  than  the  sword.  The  same 
Committee  originated  also  the  admirable  organization  of 
Four-Minute  Men  (some  5000  volunteer  speakers  to  ex 
plain  the  causes  and  needs  of  the  war  in  their  respective 
communities  to  audiences  gathered  at  the  movies  and 

her  old  annual  expenditure,  she  must  raise  five  billions  of  dollars  a  year,  which 
means  per  family  a  burden  five  times  that  of  the  average  American  family. 


750  THE  NEW  AGE 

other  entertainments)  ;  and  it  made  the  plan  effective  by 
sending  to  all  the  local  centers  at  frequent  intervals  in 
formation  and  suggestions  for  speeches. 

This  was  one  of  many  boards  of  which  only  a  few  may  be 
mentioned  here.  A  Shipping  Board  was  soon  building 
ships  on  a  scale  and  with  rapidity  beyond  all  precedent  - 
not  without  some  blunders  and  much  extravagance,1  but 
fast  enough  to  beat  the  submarine.  The  War  Labor  Board 
maintained  the  necessary  harmony  between  capital  and 
labor  in  war  industries,  and  also  did  much  to  advance 
permanently  the  condition  of  the  workers  by  encouraging 
"shop  committees"  to  share  in  the  management  of  industry. 
(Ex-President  Taft  served  as  one  of  the  joint  chairmen  of 
this  body,  and  his  judicial  temper  and  legal  skill  made  his 
services  invaluable.  He  won,  too,  lasting  gratitude  from 
labor  by  his  sympathetic  understanding  of  its  needs.)  The 
Food  Commission,  headed  by  Herbert  Hoover,  induced  the 
American  people  cheerfully  to  limit  consumption  and  to 
"save  the  waste."  In  1917  a  poor  crop  had  given  us,  by 
the  usual  computation,  only  20  million  bushels  of  wheat 
for  export ;  but  by  doing  without  and  by  using  substitutes, 
we  did  export  141  million  bushels  —  or  about  as  much  for 
each  man,  woman,  and  child,  in  England,  France,  and 
Italy,  as  we  kept  for  each  one  at  home.  In  like  manner, 
a  National  Economy  Board  induced  manufacturers  of  cloth- 
Saving  for  m&  ^0  put  forth  fewer  and  simpler  styles,  saving 
the  public  at  least  a  fifth  of  the  usual  materials.  The  mines 
would  have  proved  wholly  unable  to  meet  the  war 
demand  for  coal  except  for  the  regulation  of  its  use  through 
a  Fuel  Administrator.  People  learned  to  heat  offices  and 
homes  only  to  65°  instead  of  to  72°;  and  in  1918  for  many 
weeks,  at  government  request,  churches  were  closed,  and 
stores  and  other  industries  shut  down  on  certain  days  of 
the  week.  A  little  later,  to  save  the  petrol  needed  for  auto 
trucks  and  airplanes  in  France,  "gasless"  Sunday  took  its 

1  Disclosures,  incomplete  at  this  writing,  indicate  that  this  Board,  through 
incompetent  or  corrupt  subordinates,  has  been  sadly  victimized  by  profiteers  in 
the  purchase  of  supplies. 


ORGANIZED  EFFORT  751 

place  alongside   the   earlier   " wheatless,"   "meatless,"    and 
"heatless"  days  of  each  week. 

Along  with  saving  went  work  to  increase  production. 
Farmers  extended  their  acreage  for  needed  crops,  securing 
the  necessary  advances  for  seed  and  machinery  from  local 
or  State  agencies ;  and  the  lack  of  farm  labor  was  supplied 
in  part  by  volunteer  schoolboys  and,  especially  on  fruit 
farms,  by  college  girls.  A  huge  food  supply,  too,  was 
produced  in  cities  on  "war  gardens,"  from  grounds  formerly 
devoted  to  beauty  or  pleasure.  Other  volunteer  activities 
supplemented  the  work  of  the  National  Boards  —  the 
unpaid  Examining  Boards  of  busy  physicians  to  secure 
physical  fitness  for  the  recruits ;  the  volunteer  village  school 
teachers  working  nights  and  Sundays  to  classify  results 
from  the  draft  questionnaires ;  the  Red  Cross  organizations 
reaching  down  to  every  rural  schoolhouse. 

In  all  the  activities,  women  had  a  leading  part ;  and 
indeed  behind  each  man  who  took  up  a  rifle  stood  a  woman 
to  take  up  the  task  he  had  laid  down.  In  England,  as  her 
men  were  drained  off,  five  million  women  did  men's  work; 
and  even  in  America  wromen  ran  motor  buses,  street  cars, 
and  elevators,  and  were  largely  employed  in  munition 
factories. 

The  United  States  formed  no  alliance  with  England  or 
France  or  Italy,  but  it  recognized  that  they  and  we  were 
"associated"  as  co-workers  and  that  we  must  give  Taxes  and 
them  all  possible  aid.     The  part  of  the  American  loans 
soldier  has  been  treated.     Money,  too,  we  loaned  freely  — 
most  of  it,  to  be  sure,  used  at  once  by  the  Allies  in  buying 
supplies  in  America.     The  direct  taxes  raised   during  the 
war  (some  four  billions  a  year)  came  at  least  half  from  a 
graduated  income  tax  bearing  heavily  on  large  incomes,  in 
heritance  taxes  of  like  character,  "excess  profits"  taxes,  and 
"luxury"  taxes.     The  remaining  money  for  all  this  war  ex 
penditure,  our  government  borrowed  from  our  own  people, 
mainly  in  a  series  of  "Liberty  bond"  issues.     The  bonds 
were  sold  in   small  denominations,  down  to  fifty  dollars, 
and  were  taken  very  largely  by  people  of  small  means  - 


752  THE  NEW  AGE 

at  a  time,  too,  when  much  more  profitable  investments 
were  open. 

This  glorious  record  was  not  written  so  hurriedly  without 
some  grievous  blots.  In  the  heat  of  war  passion,  gross 
Blots  on  injustices  were  committed  now  and  then  by  honest 
the  record  patriots,  and  some  foolish  offenders  were  punished 
too  severely.  Mob  violence  was  permitted,  even  encouraged, 
by  some  local  authorities.  The  methods  by  which  poor  men 
in  many  places  were  coerced  into  taking  more  bonds  than 
they  could  afford  did  not  well  suit  the  name  Liberty  for 
those  bonds.  Here  and  there  designing  politicians  or  self 
ish  business  interests  sought  to  discredit  radical  reform 
movements  by  accusing  the  leaders  falsely  of  "pro-Ger 
manism"  -a  desecration  of  patriotism  to  cover  sinister 
ambitions  that  was  more  hurtful  to  our  war  efficiency  than 
all  the  pro-German  plots  in  America. 

Basest  of  all,  and  most  dangerous  to  American  success, 
were  the  financial  scandals.  To  prevent  the  European 
The  demand  for  our  products  from  raising  prices 

profiteers  ruinously,  and  to  check  speculation  in  foodstuffs, 
the  Food  Commission  took  some  important  steps  in  fixing 
prices  and  regulating  profits.  But  the  process  did  not  go 
far  enough.  The  price  of  wheat  and  of  wheat  flour  was  fixed  ; 
but  speculators  traded  upon  the  patriotic  willingness  of  the 
people  to  use  less  needed  substitutes  (as  the  government  re 
quested),  like  rye  flour  and  oat  meal,  by  raising  exorbitantly 
the  prices  of  these  flours.  During  a  great  coal  strike,  in 
1919,  Mr.  McAdoo,  ex-Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  startled 
the  country  by  announcing  that  the  coal  mine  owners,  ac 
cording  to  their  own  income  tax  reports  to  the  government, 
had  made  immense  profits  the  preceding  year,  many  of  them 
over  100  per  cent  on  their  entire  capital  stock  (which  in 
cluded  vast  amounts  of  "water")  and  some  of  them  2000 
per  cent  —  at  a  time  too  when  their  workmen  at  the  request 
of  a  government  board  were  toiling  patriotically  for  a  lower 
"real  wage"  than  before  the  war.  And  Mr.  Basil  M. 
Manly,  one  of  the  joint  chairmen  of  the  War  Labor  Board. 


THE  ORGY  OF  PROFITEERING 


753 


has  since  published  figures  and  facts  to  show  that  Mr. 
McAdoo's  statement  was  far  too  moderate.  Quite  as  out 
rageous  was  the  profiteering  of  the  meat  packers  and  the 
steel  mills,  just  when  every  good  citizen  was  stinting  his 
life  so  as  to  buy  Liberty  bonds  —  the  proceeds  from  which 
were  being  used  by  the  government  to  purchase  the 
exorbitantly  priced  goods  out  of  which  these  companies 
were  making  their  vile  profits.  Vast  "war  fortunes,"  too, 


AMERICAN  AIRPLANES  IN  MILITARY  FORMATION  over  an  aviation  field  in  Texas- 
At  our  entrance  into  the  war  our  papers  boasted  that  some  of  our  planes  would 
"  blind  the  German  giant- ''  But  despite  the  expenditure  of  a  billion  dollars  in 
the  enterprise,  we  failed,  during  the  remaining  year  and  a  half  of  war,  to  place 
fighting  planes  o'f  our  manufacture  on  the  front-  Reputable  engineers  have 
made  charges  —  as  yet  uninvestigated  —  that  the  failure  was  due  to  graft  as 
well  as  to  mismanagement. 

were  made  in  munitions  and  in  many  other  lines,  and,  by 
common  computation,  some  seventeen  thousand  "  war 
millionaires"  sprang  up.  Nor  has  the  government  proved 
resolute  enough  to  punish  one  big  profiteer. 

During  the  struggle  we  boasted  loudly  that  this  war  was 
being  paid  for  by  the  rich,  not  by  the  workers.  It  might 
have  been  paid  for  so,  if  we  had  "conscripted"  the  wealth 
of  these  war  profiteers  as  zealously  as  we  conscripted  the 
life  of  our  splendid  youth  for  the  battle  field.  As  things 


754  THE  NEW  AGE 

are,  we  justify  our  boasts  very  imperfectly  by  pointing  to  our 
system  of  war  taxes.  So  far  we  have  hardly  begun  to  pay 
the  cost.  If  we  make  good  our  pledge,  we  must  continue 
for  a  generation  to  raise  most  of  our  national  revenue  on  the 
same  system,  or  on  one  that  will  more  effectively  reach  the 
war  fortunes.  But  hardly  had  a  new  Congress  been  elected 
in  November  of  1920,  when  a  drive  of  big  interests  began 
trying  to  persuade  it  to  repeal  the  existing  taxes  on  wealth. 

This  is  perhaps  the  least  important  of  many  signs  of  reac 
tion  since  the  war.  The  heaviest  cost  of  war  is  the  spiritual 
The  cost.  Before  the  struggle  closed,  the  whole  people 

promise  seemed  to  have  won  a  vision  of  a  new  and  better 
world.  We  thought  we  had  learned  that  when  a  rich  family 
saved  its  fragments  for  a  later  meal,  some  starving  child 
elsewhere  could  be  fed  :  that  is,  we  had  learned  to  save,  we 
thought,  not  for  our  own  pockets  alone,  but  for  the  general 
good.  We  had  learned  to  do  our  daily  work  not  merely  for 
private  gain,  but,  more,  for  the  well  being  of  our  country. 
We  saw  clearly  that  every  man  who  fails  to  do  work  useful  to 
society  is  a  parasite,  whether  tramp  or  millionaire.  WTe  saw 
that  by  cooperation,  in  place  of  wasteful  and  outgrown 
competition,  we  could  increase  enormously  the  productive 
ness  of  our  labor,  and  that  by  wise  direction  useful  work 
could  be  found  for  every  willing  hand  and  brain.  We  saw 
thousands  of  cases  of  inefficiency  and  of  wasted  lives,  due 
to  defective  eyes  or  teeth  or  feet,  cured  at  public  expense 
to  augment  our  fighting  efficiency,  and  we  began  to  see 
that  like  methods  might  tremendously  augment  industrial 
efficiency  in  peace,  besides  making  multitudes  of  lives 
happier  and  better.  And  surely,  we  thought,  when  we 
have  won  this  war,  the  world  will  free  itself  from  the  crush 
ing  cost  of  vast  military  establishments  with  their  fatal 
temptations  to  new  wars. 

Lessons  like  these,  it  seemed,  after  being  so  burned  into 
our  lives  through  the  war  years,  must  leave  lasting  impress. 
But  at  the  end  the  world  was  wearied  in  spirit  as  in  body. 
There  followed  a  general  slump  in  morale,  and  the  field  was 


SPIRITUAL  LOSSES  755 

abandoned  for  a  time  (as  in  all  other  large  countries)  to 
riotous  profiteering  and  shameless  self-indulgence.  The  war 
mind,  with  its  retrogressive  instincts,  impelled  us  And  disap- 
to  rely  on  cave-man  methods  rather  than  social  p°intment 
means  to  reach  our  ends.  In  labor  disputes,  both  parties 
show  a  disposition  to  violence.  Labor  has  attempted  general 
strikes,  when  the  ballot  was  the  proper  means  of  reform; 
and  reactionary  heads  of  capitalistic  associations,  organized 
nation-wide  against  even  the  old  unionism  (under  color  of  an 
"  open  shop  "  crusade)  and  talking  openly  of  using  machine 
guns,  seek  to  create  State  constabularies  to  break  strikes, 
Cossack  fashion,  and,  by  unscrupulous  and  costly  but  emi 
nently  effective  propaganda,  strive  to  confuse  all  liberalism 
with  "  Bolshevism."  x  Even  the  Department  of  Justice,  in  a 
ludicrous  panic  over  a  handful  of  revolutionary  agitators, 
stains  the  fair  fame  of  America  as  a  land  of  freedom,  and 
multiplies  radical  discontent  as  no  other  factor  has  been  able 
to  do,  by  denying  plain  Constitutional  rights  to  American 
citizens  and  by  extending  a  vicious  spy  system  to  include 
even  the  agent  provocateur.2  Small  wonder  that  Charles 
Evans  Hughes  has  declared  his  fear  that  the  Constitution 
could  not  survive  another  great  war. 

Such  facts  are  especially  painful,  when  one  recalls  the  liberal 
tendencies  of  the  Wilson  administration  in  the  years  1913- 
1916.  By  1918,  that  administration  had  executed  The  ad- 
an  amazing  right-about.  It  is  too  early  to  under-  ministration 
stand  the  causes  adequately ;  but  the  fact  remains  that  the 
President's  old  unofficial  progressive  advisers  were  discarded, 
and  that  within  the  Cabinet  some  liberals  (like  Secretary 
McAdoo  of  the  Treasury,  long  the  strongest  spirit  there) 
had  withdrawn,  while  Conservatives  like  Secretaries  Palmer 
and  Burleson,  formerly  quaint  figures  in  a  liberal  Cabinet, 

1  See  especially  the  unimpeachable  evidence  of  Interchurch  Movement's  Report 
on  the  Steel  Strike  of  1919.     The  temperate  but  conclusive  proof  there  of  the  pros 
titution  of  the  "public"  press  to  serve  despotic  purposes  of  big  business  touches 
the  deadliest  danger  in  American  life. 

2  Evidence  is  contained  in  a  detailed  statement  signed  by  legal  authorities  of 
high  standing  and  entitled  Illegal  Practises  of  the  Department  of  Justice  (published 
at  Washington  by  the  National  Popular  Government  League). 


756  THE  NEW  AGE 

had  become  the  dominant  forces  in  it.  In  some  degree,  all 
this  may  have  been  connected  with  a  disastrous  accident 
yet  to  be  mentioned. 

Mr.  Wilson's  return  from  the  Peace  Congress  was  followed 
by  a  two-year's  debate  in  Senate  and  country  upon  the 
The  League  League  of  Nations.  The  President  insisted  vigor- 
of  Nations  ously  upon  ratification  of  the  Covenant  without 
any  essential  modification.  Party  discipline  brought  him  the 
support  of  all  but  one  or  two  Democratic  senators,  but  at  no 
time  did  he  have  any  prospect  of  the  necessary  two-thirds 
vote.  All  attempts  of  certain  Republican  senators  to  amend 
the  Covenant  radically  failed  also.  A  small  body  of  "  ir- 
reconcilables "  declared  against  any  League,  arguing  with 
short-sighted  selfishness  that  America  was  well  off  and  could 
let  the  rest  of  the  world  look  out  for  itself;  but  finally 
a  small  majority,  including  most  of  the  Republican  senators, 
added  to  the  Covenant  certain  reservations  as  to  our  in 
terpretation  of  our  obligations  under  it.  Against  the 
President's  opposition,  however,  the  necessary  two-thirds 
vote  to  ratify  in  this  form  could  not  be  secured.  In  the 
midst  of  this  deadlocked  struggle,  while  on  a  campaign 
tour  to  arouse  popular  support  for  the  League,  the  over 
burdened  President  suffered  a  distressing  physical  collapse, 
which  for  many  months  wholly  incapacitated  him  for  public 
business. 

Meantime  the  country  entered  the  political  campaign  of 
1920.  The  Republican  Convention  at  Chicago  turned  down 
Election  the  progressive  element  represented  there,  and, 
of  1920  with  equal  decision,  the  Democratic  Convention 
at  San  Francisco  turned  down  McAdoo  and  rejected  every 
part  of  the  progressive  program  that  was  urged.  Both 
platforms  contained  vague  progressive  promises ;  but  these 
were  merely  the  usual  tactical  maneuvers.  The  machinery 
of  both  parties,  it  was  plain,  was  controlled  overwhelmingly 
by  reactionary  elements. 

Officially  both  parties  declared  the  League  the  main 
issue.  But  the  people  were  confused  by  the  Republican 
candidate's  conflicting  attempts  to  conciliate  both  Moderate 


THE  NEW  AGE  757 

Reservationists  and  Irreconcilables  within  his  party,  and, 
except  for  a  small  class  of  intellectuals,  they  had  mainly 
lost  interest  in  that  question  anyway.  They  were  much 
more  concerned  at  the  unbridled  orgy  of  profiteering  and 
the  perilous  increase  in  the  cost  of  living ;  and  progressive 
elements  were  deeply  offended  by  recent  reactionary  policies. 
There  was,  to  be  sure,  no  assurance  whatever  of  betterment 
in  either  matter  from  a  change  of  parties,  but  the  people 
were  minded  at  least  to  punish  the  party  just  then  most 
directly  responsible;  and  the  result  was  a  landslide  Re 
publican  victory,  with  the  election  of  Warren  G.  Harding. 

Our  story  closes  in  a  period  of  stress.  America  is  not 
wholly  free  from  danger  that  frantic  reaction  may  bury 
progress  beyond  resurrection,  or  that  ignorant  revolution 
may  destroy  the  possibility  of  wholesome  progress.  But 
men  of  faith  will  work  that  our  children  may  yet  achieve 
the  promised  land  whereof  we  caught  gleaming  visions 
through  the  war  wrack  —  a  world  "  safe  for  democracy  " 
and  "  fit  for  heroes."  If  civilization  is  to  be  saved  from  world 
wide  collapse,  there  must  be  built  a  new  world  order,  based 
not  on  international  rivalry  but  on  human  fraternity  and 
solidarity ;  and,  just  'as  surely,  within  each  nation  must  we 
build  a  new  social  order  based  not  upon  competition  and 
class  struggles  but  upon  brotherhood,  —  on  a  planned  and 
democratic  cooperation  in  industry  for  the  common  good. 

Not  at  a  leap  may  we  reach  such  a  goal.  But  the  man 
to  serve  the  world  is  he  who  sets  his  face  resolutely  toward 
the  goal  and  withholds  all  aid  to  measures  that  make  it 
more  difficult  to  attain.  The  story  of  America's  past  is 
worth  while  so  far  as  it  points  us  to  a  nobler  America  of  the 
future  —  so  far  as  it  gives  us  robust  faith  that  the  nation 
which  rallied  so  splendidly  to  save  our  country  and  the  world 
in  war  time  will  not  long  fail  in  time  of  peace. 


Unexpected  delays  in  publication  make  it  possible  to  add 
a  paragraph  of  optimism  for  the  future.     The  early  work 


758  THE  NEW  AGE 

of  the  Disarmament  Conference  at  Washington  in  the  au 
tumn  of  1921  gives  evidence  that  the  hope  of  progress  ex 
pressed  above  is  on  the  way  toward  realization. 


APPENDIX 

THE  FEDERAL   CONSTITUTION 

(Recommended  by  the  Philadelphia  Convention  to  the  States,  Septem 
ber  17,  1787;  ratified  by  the  ninth  State,  June  21,  1788;  in  effect,  April 
30,  1789.  The  text  is  that  printed  in  the  Revised  Statutes  (1878),  except 
for  (1)  the  footnote  references,  and  (2)  the  brackets  used  in  a  few  instances 
to  inclose  portions  of  the  document  no  longer  effective.  Interpolated 
matter,  in  the  same  type  as  this  paragraph,  is  placed  within  marks  of  paren 
thesis.) 

We  the  People  of  the  United  States,  in  Order  to  form  a  more  perfect  Union, 
establish  Justice,  insure  domestic  Tranquility,  provide  for  the  common 
defence,  promote  the  general  Welfare,  and  secure  the  Blessings  of  Liberty 
to  ourselves  and  our  Posterity,  do  ordain  and  establish  this  CONSTITUTION 
for  the  United  States  of  America. 

ARTICLE  I 

Section  i.  All  legislative  Powers  herein  granted  shall  be  vested  in  a 
Congress  of  the  United  States,  which  shall  consist  of  a  Senate  and  House  of 
Representatives. 

Section  2.  The  House  of  Representatives  shall  be  composed  of  Members 
chosen  every  second  Year  by  the  People  of  the  several  States,  and  the  Electors 
in  each  State  shall  have  the  Qualifications  requisite  for  Electors  of  the  most 
numerous  Branch  of  the  State  Legislature. 

No  Person  shall  be  a  Representative  who  shall  not  have  attained  to  the 
Age  of  twenty  five  Years,  and  been  seven  Years  a  Citizen  of  the  United  Statss, 
and  who  shall  not,  when  elected,  be  an  Inhabitant  of  that  State  in  which  he 
shall  be  chosen. 

Representatives  and  direct  Taxes  shall  be  apportioned  among  the  several 
States  which  may  be  included  within  this  Union,  according  to  their  respective 
numbers  [which  shall  be  determined  by  adding  to  the  whole  Number  of  free 
Persons,  including  those  bound  to  Service  for  a  Term  of  Years],  and  excluding 
Indians  not  taxed,  [three  fifths  of  all  other  Persons].  The  actual  Enumera 
tion  shall  be  made  within  three  Years  after  the  first  Meeting  of  the  Congress  of 
the  United  States,  and  within  every  subsequent  Term  of  ten  Years,  in  such 
Manner  as  they  shall  by  Law  direct.1  The  number  of  Representatives  shall 
not  exceed  one  for  every  thirty  Thousand,2  but  each  State  shall  have  at  Least 
one  Representative. 

1  The  first  census  was  taken  in  1790,  and  one  has  been  taken  in  the  closing 
year  of  each  decade  since. 

2  The  First  Congress  made  the  number  33,000.     It  is  now  (1920)  193,284. 

1 


2  APPENDIX 

When  vacancies  happen  in  the  Representation  from  any  State,  the  Executive 
Authority  thereof  shall  issue  Writs  of  Election  to  fill  such  Vacancies. 

The  House  of  Representatives  shall  chuse  their  Speaker  and  other  Officers ; 
and  shall  have  the  sole  Power  of  Impeachment. 

Section  3.  The  Senate  of  the  United  States  shall  be  composed  of  two 
Senators  from  each  State,  chosen  [by  the  Legislature  thereof,]  for  six  Years ; 
and  each  Senator  shall  have  one  Vote. 

[Immediately  after  they  shall  be  assembled  in  Consequence  of  the  first 
Election,  they  shall  be  divided  as  equally  as  may  be  into  three  Classes.  The 
Seats  of  the  Senators  of  the  first  Class  shall  be  vacated  at  the  Expiration  of  the 
second  Year,  of  the  second  Class  at  the  Expiration  of  the  fourth  Year,  and  of 
the  third  Class  at  the  Expiration  of  the  sixth  Year],  so  that  one  third  may  be 
chosen  every  second  Year;  [and  if  Vacancies  happen  by  Resignation,  or 
otherwise,  during  the  Recess  of  the  Legislature  of  any  State,  the  Executive 
thereof  may  make  temporary  Appointments  until  the  next  Meeting  of  the 
Legislature,  which  shall  then  fill  such  Vacancies.] 1 

No  Person  shall  be  a  Senator  who  shall  not  have  attained  to  the  Age  of 
thirty  Years,  and  been  nine  Years  a  Citizen  of  the  United  States,  and  who 
shall  not,  when  elected,  be  an  Inhabitant  of  that  State  for  which  he  shall  be 
chosen. 

The  Vice  President  of  the  United  States  shall  be  President  of  the  Senate, 
but  shall  have  no  Vote,  unless  they  be  equally  divided. 

The  Senate  shall  chuse  their  other  Officers,  and  also  a  President  pro 
tempore,  in  the  Absence  of  the  Vice  President,  or  when  he  shall  exercise 
the  Office  of  the  President  of  the  United  States 

The  Senate  shall  have  the  sole  Power  to  try  all  Impeachments.  When 
sitting  for  that  Purpose,  they  shall  be  on  Oath  or  Affirmation.  When  the 
President  of  the  United  States  is  tried,  the  Chief  Justice  shall  preside :  And 
no  Person  shall  be  convicted  without  the  Concurrence  of  two  thirds  of  the 
Members  present. 

Judgment  in  Cases  of  Impeachment  shall  not  extend  further  than  to  re 
moval  from  Office,  and  disqualification  to  hold  and  enjoy  any  Office  of  honor, 
Trust,  or  Profit  under  the  United  States:  but  the  Party  convicted  shall 
nevertheless  be  liable  and  subject  to  Indictment,  Trial,  Judgment,  and 
Punishment,  according  to  Law. 

Section  4.  The  Times,  Places,  and  Manner  of  holding  Elections  for 
Senators  and  Representatives  shall  be  prescribed  in  each  State  by  the  Legis 
lature  thereof ;  but  the  Congress  may  at  any  time  by  Law  make  or  alter  such 
Regulations  [except  as  to  the  Places  of  chusing  senators]. 

The  Congress  shall  assemble  at  least  once  in  every  Year,  and  such  Meeting 
shall  be  on  the  first  Monday  in  December,  unless  they  shall  by  Law  appoint 
a  different  Day. 

Section  5.  Each  House  shall  be  the  Judge  of  the  Elections,  Returns, 
and  Qualifications  of  its  own  Members,  and  a  Majority  of  each  shall  constitute 
a  Quorum  to  do  Business ;  but  a  smaller  number  may  adjourn  from  day  to 
day,  and  may  be  authorized  to  compel  the  Attendance  of  absent  Members, 
in  such  Manner,  and  under  such  Penalties  as  each  House  may  provide. 

Each  House  may  determine  the  Rules  of  its  Proceedings,  punish  its  Mem- 

1  See  Seventeenth  Amendment. 


THE  FEDERAL  CONSTITUTION  3 

bers  for  disorderly  Behaviour,  and,  with  the  Concurrence  of  two  thirds, 
expel  a  member. 

Each  House  shall  keep  a  Journal  of  its  Proceedings,  and  from  time  to  time 
publish  the  same,  excepting  such  Parts  as  may  in  their  Judgment  require 
Secrecy ;  and  the  Yeas  and  Nays  of  the  Members  of  either  House  on  any 
question  shall,  at  the  Desire  of  one  fifth  of  those  Present,  be  entered  on  the 
Journal. 

Neither  House,  during  the  Session  of  Congress,  shall,  without  the  Consent 
of  the  other,  adjourn  for  more  than  three  days,  nor  to  any  other  Place  than  that 
in  which  the  two  Houses  shall  be  sitting. 

Section  6.  The  Senators  and  Representatives  shall  receive  a  Compensa 
tion  for  their  Services,  to  be  ascertained  by  Law,  and  paid  out  of  the  Treasury 
of  the  United  States.  They  shall  in  all  Cases,  except  Treason,  Felony,  and 
Breach  of  the  Peace,  be  privileged  from  Arrest  during  their  Attendance  at 
the  Session  of  their  respective  Houses,  and  in  going  to  and  returning  from  the 
same ;  and  for  any  Speech  or  Debate  in  either  House,  they  shall  not  be  ques 
tioned  in  any  other  Place. 

No  Senator  or  Representative  shall,  during  the  Time  for  which  he  was 
elected,  be  appointed  to  any  civil  Office  under  the  Authority  of  the  United 
States,  which  shall  have  been  created,  or  the  Emoluments  whereof  shall  have 
been  encreased  during  such  time ;  and  no  Person  holding  any  Office  under  the 
United  States,  shall  be  a  Member  of  either  House  during  his  Continuance  in 
Office. 

Section  7.  All  Bills  for  raising  Revenue  shall  originate  in  the  House  of 
Representatives ;  but  the  Senate  may  propose  or  concur  with  Amendments  as 
on  other  Bills. 

Every  Bill  which  shall  have  passed  the  House  of  Representatives  and  the 
Senate,  shall,  before  it  become  a  Law,  be  presented  to  the  President  of  the 
United  States ;  If  he  approve  he  shall  sign  it,  but  if  not  he  shall  return  it, 
with  his  Objections,  to  that  House  in  which  it  shall  have  originated,  who 
shall  enter  the  Objections  at  large  on  their  Journal,  and  proceed  to  recon 
sider  it.  If  after  such  Reconsideration  two  thirds  of  that  House  shall  agree 
to  pass  the  Bill,  it  shall  be  sent,  together  with  the  Objections,  to  the  other 
House,  by  which  it  shall  likewise  be  reconsidered,  and  if  approved  by  two 
thirds  of  that  House,  it  shall  become  a  Law.  But  in  all  such  Cases  the 
Votes  of  both  Houses  shall  be  determined  by  Yeas  and  Nays,  and  the 
Names  of  the  Persons  voting  for  and  against  the  Bill  shall  be  entered  on 
the  Journal  of  each  House  respectively.  If  any  Bill  shall  not  be  returned 
by  the  President  within  ten  Days  (Sundays  excepted)  after  it  shall  have 
been  presented  to  him,  the  Same  shall  be  a  Jaw,  in  like  Manner  as  if  he 
had  signed  it,  unless  Congress  by  their  Adjournment  prevent  its  Return,  in 
which  Case  it  shall  not  be  a  Law.1 

1  The  veto  provision  in  the  Massachusetts  Constitution  of  1780  ran  :  — 
"Article  II.  No  bill  or  resolve  of  the  senate  or  house  of  representatives  shall 
become  a  law,  and  have  force  as  such,  until  it  shall  have  been  laid  before  the  governor 
for  his  revisal ;  and  if  he,  upon  such  revision,  approve  thereof,  he  shall  signify  his 
approbation  by  signing  the  same.  But  if  he  have  any  objection  to  the  passing  of 
such  bill  or  resolve,  he  shall  return  the  same,  together  with  his  objections  thereto, 
in  writing,  to  the  senate  or  house  of  representatives,  in  whatsoever  the  same  shall 
have  originated,  who  shall  enter  the  objections  sent  down  by  the  governor,  at  large, 


4  APPENDIX 

Every  Order,  Resolution,  or  Vote  to  which  the  Concurrence  of  the  Senate 
and  House  of  Representatives  may  be  necessary  (except  on  a  question  of 
Adjournment)  shall  be  presented  to  the  President  of  the  United  States; 
and  before  the  Same  shall  take  Effect,  shall  be  approved  by  him,  or  being 
disapproved  by  him,  shall  be  repassed  by  two  thirds  of  the  Senate  and  House 
of  Representatives,  according  to  the  Rules  and  Limitations  prescribed  hi  the 
Case  of  a  Bill. 

Section  8.  The  Congress  shall  have  Power  To  lay  and  collect  Taxes, 
Duties,  Imposts,  and  Excises,  to  pay  the  Debts  and  provide  for  the  common 
Defence  and  general  Welfare  of  the  United  States ;  but  all  Duties,  Imposts 
and  Excises  shall  be  uniform  throughout  the  United  States ; 

To  borrow  Money  on  the  Credit  of  the  United  States ; 

To  regulate  Commerce  with  foreign  Nations,  and  among  the  several  States, 
and  with  the  Indian  Tribes ; 

To  establish  an  uniform  Rule  of  Naturalization,  and  uniform  Laws  on  the 
subject  of  Bankruptcies  throughout  the  United  States ; 

To  coin  Money,  regulate  the  Value  thereof,  and  of  foreign  Coin,  and  fix 
the  Standard  of  Weights  and  Measures ; 

To  provide  for  the  Punishment  of  counterfeiting  the  Securities  and  current 
Coin  of  the  United  States ; 

To  establish  Post  Offices  and  post  Roads ; 

To  promote  the  Progress  of  Science  and  useful  Arts,  by  securing  for  limited 
Times  to  Authors  and  Inventors  the  exclusive  Right  to  their  respective  Writings 
and  Discoveries ; 

To  constitute  Tribunals  inferior  to  the  supreme  Court; 

To  define  and  punish  Piracies  and  Felonies  committed  on  the  high  Seas, 
and  Offences  against  the  Law  of  Nations; 

To  declare  War,  grant  Letters  of  Marque  and  Reprisal,  and  make  Rules 
concerning  Captures  on  Land  and  Water; 

To  raise  and  support  Armies,  but  no  Appropriation  of  Money  to  that  Use 
shall  be  for  a  longer  Term  than  two  Years ; 

To  provide  and  maintain  a  Navy; 

To  make  Rules  for  the  Government  and  Regulation  of  the  land  and  naval 
Forces ; 

To  provide  for  calling  forth  the  Militia  to  execute  the  Laws  of  the  Union, 
suppress  Insurrections  and  repel  Invasions ; 

on  their,  records,  and  proceed  to  reconsider  the  said  bill  or  resolve ;  but  if  after  such 
reconsideration,  two  thirds  of  the  said  senate  or  house  of  representatives  shall,  not 
withstanding  the  objections,  agree  to  pass  the  same,  it  shall,  together  with  the 
objections,  be  sent  to  the  other  branch  of  the  legislature,  where  it  shall  also  be 
reconsidered,  and  if  approved  by  two  thirds  of  the  members  present,  shall  have  the 
force  of  law ;  but  in  all  such  cases,  the  vote  of  both  houses  shall  be  determined 
by  yeas  and  nays ;  and  the  names  of  the  persons  voting  for  or  against  the  said  bill 
or  resolve  shall  be  entered  upon  the  public  records  of  the  Commonwealth. 

"And  in  order  to  prevent  unnecessary  delays,  if  any  bill  or  resolve  shall  not 
be  returned  by  the  governor  within  five  days  after  it  shall  have  been  presented,  the 
same  shall  have  the  force  of  law." 

The  "  pocket- veto  "  clause  (the  last  provision  of  the  text  above)  was  origi 
nal  in  the  Federal  Constitution. 


THE  FEDERAL  CONSTITUTION  5 

To  provide  for  organizing,  arming,  and  disciplining,  the  Militia,  and  for 
governing  such  Part  of  them  as  may  be  employed  in  the  Service  of  the  United 
States,  reserving  to  the  States  respectively,  the  Appointment  of  the  Officers, 
and  the  Authority  of  training  the  Militia  according  to  the  discipline  prescribed 
by  Congress : 

To  exercise  exclusive  Legislation  in  all  Cases  whatsoever,  over  such  Dis 
trict  (not  exceeding  ten  Miles  square)  as  may,  by  Cession  of  particular  States, 
and  the  Acceptance  of  Congress,  become  the  Seat  of  the  Government  of  the 
United  States,  and  to  exercise  like  Authority  over  all  Places  purchased  by  the 
Consent  of  the  Legislature  of  the  State  in  which  the  same  shall  be,  for  the 
Erection  of  Forts,  Magazines,  Arsenals,  dock- Yards,  and  other  needful  Build 
ings  ;  —  And 

To  make  all  Laws  which  shall  be  necessary  and  proper  for  carrying  into 
Execution  the  foregoing  Powers,  and  all  other  Powers  vested  by  this  Con 
stitution  in  the  Government  of  the  United  States,  or  in  any  Department  or 
Officer  thereof. 

Section  9.  [The  Migration  or  Importation  of  such  Persons  as  any  of  the 
States  now  existing  shall  think  proper  to  admit,  shall  not  be  prohibited  by  the 
Congress  prior  to  the  Year  one  thousand  eight  hundred  and  eight,  but  a 
Tax  or  duty  may  be  imposed  on  such  Importation,  not  exceeding  ten  dollars 
for  each  Person.] 

The  Privilege  of  the  Writ  of  Habeas  Corpus  shall  not  be  suspended,  unless 
when  in  Cases  of  Rebellion  or  Invasion  the  public  Safety  may  require  it. 

No  Bill  of  Attainder  or  ex  post  facto  Law  shall  be  passed. 

No  Capitation,  or  other  direct,1  Tax  shall  be  laid,  unless  in  Proportion  to 
the  Census  or  Enumeration  herein  before  directed  to  be  taken. 

No  Tax  or  Duty  shall  be  laid  on  Articles  exported  from  any  State. 

No  Preference  shall  be  given  by  any  Regulation  of  Commerce  or  Revenue 
to  the  Ports  of  one  State  over  those  of  another :  nor  shall  Vessels  bound  to, 
or  from,  one  State,  be  obliged  to  enter,  clear,  or  pay  Duties  in  another. 

No  Money  shall  be  drawn  from  the  Treasury,  but  in  Consequence  of 
Appropriations  made  by  Laws ;  and  a  regular  Statement  and  Account  of  the 
Receipts  and  Expenditures  of  all  public  Money  shall  be  published  from  time 
to  time. 

No  Title  of  Nobility  shall  be  granted  by  the  United  States :  And  no  Person 
holding  any  Office  of  Profit  or  Trust  under  them,  shall,  without  the  Consent 
of  the  Congress,  accept  of  any  present,  Emolument,  Office,  or  Title,  of  any 
kind  whatever,  from  any  King,  Prince,  or  foreign  State. 

Section  10.  No  State  shall  enter  into  any  Treaty,  Alliance,  or  Confeder 
ation  ;  grant  Letters  of  Marque  and  Reprisal ;  coin  Money ;  emit  Bills  of 
Credit;  make  any  Thing  but  gold  and  silver  Coin  a  Tender  in  Payment  of 
Debts;  pass  any  Bill  of  Attainder,  ex  post  facto  Law,  or  Law  inpairing  the 
Obligation  of  Contracts,  or  grant  any  Title  of  Nobility. 

No  State  shall,  without  the  Consent  of  the  Congress,  lay  any  Imposts  or 
Duties  on  Imports  or  Exports,  except  what  may  be  absolutely  necessary  for 
executing  its  inspection  Laws :  and  the  net  Produce  of  all  Duties  and  Imposts, 
laid  by  any  State  on  Imports  or  Exports,  shall  be  for  the  Use  of  the  Treasury 
of  the  United  States ;  and  all  such  Laws  shall  be  subject  to  the  Revision  and 
Controul  of  the  Congress. 

1  Modified  by  the  Sixteenth  Amendment. 


6  APPENDIX 

No  State  shall,  without  the  consent  of  Congress,  lay  any  Duty  of  Tonnage, 
keep  Troops,  or  Ships  of  War  in  time  of  Peace,  enter  into  any  Agreement  or 
Compact  with  another  State,  or  with  a  foreign  Power,  or  engage  in  War,  un 
less  actually  invaded,  or  in  such  imminent  Danger  as  will  not  admit  of  delay. 

ARTICLE   II 

Section  i.  The  executive  Power  shall  be  vested  in  a  President  of  the 
United  States  of  America.  He  shall  hold  his  Office  during  the  Term  of  four 
Years  and,  together  with  the  Vice  President,  chosen  for  the  same  Term,  be 
elected,  as  follows 

Each  State  shall  appoint,  in  such  Manner  as  the  Legislature  thereof  may 
direct,  a  Number  of  Electors,  equal  to  the  whole  number  of  Senators  and 
Representatives  to  which  the  State  may  be  entitled  in  the  Congress :  but  no 
Senator  or  Representative,  or  Person  holding  an  Office  of  Trust  or  Profit 
under  the  United  States,  shall  be  appointed  an  Elector. 

[The  Electors  shall  meet  in  their  respective  States,  and  vote  by  Ballot  for 
two  Persons,  of  whom  one  at  least  shall  not  be  an  Inhabitant  of  the  same 
State  with  themselves.  And  they  shall  make  a  List  of  all  the  Persons  voted 
for,  and  of  the  Number  of  Votes  for  each;  which  List  they  shall  sign  and 
certify,  and  transmit  sealed  to  the  Seat  of  the  Government  of  the  United 
States,  directed  to  the  President  of  the  Senate.  The  President  of  the  Senate 
shall,  in  the  Presence  of  the  Senate  and  House  of  Representative,  open  all 
the  Certificates,  and  the  Votes  shall  then  be  counted.  The  Person  having  the 
greatest  number  of  Votes  shall  be  the  President,  if  such  number  be  a  Majority 
of  the  whole  number  of  Electors  appointed ;  and  if  there  be  more  than  one 
who  have  such  Majority,  and  have  an  equal  Number  of  Votes,  then  the  House 
of  Representatives  shall  immediately  chuse  by  Ballot  one  of  them  for  Presi 
dent;  and  if  no  Person  have  a  Majority,  then  from  the  five  highest  on  the 
List  the  said  House  shall  in  like  Manner  chuse  the  President.  But  in  chusing 
the  President,  the  Votes  shall  be  taken  by  States,  the  Representation  from 
each  State  having  one  Vote  ...  In  every  Case,  after  the  Choice  of  the 
President,  the  Person  having  the  greatest  Number  of  Votes  of  the  Elec 
tors  shall  be  the  Vice  President.  But  if  there  shall  remain  two  or  more 
who  have  equal  Votes,  the  Senate  shall  chuse  from  them  by  Ballot  the  Vice 
President.] l 

The  Congress  may  determine  the  Time  of  chusing  the  Electors,  and  the 
Day  on  which  they  shall  give  their  Votes;  which  Day  shall  be  the  same 
throughout  the  United  States. 

No  Person  except  a  natural  born  Citizen,  or  a  Citizen  of  the  United  States 
at  the  time  of  the  Adoption  of  this  Constitution,  shall  be  eligible  to  the  Office 
of  President ;  neither  shall  any  Person  be  eligible  to  that  Office  who  shall  not 
have  attained  to  the  Age  of  thirty  five  Years,  and  been  fourteen  Years  a  Resi 
dent  within  the  United  States. 

In  Case  of  the  Removal  of  the  President  from  Office,  or  of  his  Death, 
Resignation,  or  Inability  to  discharge  the  Powers  and  Duties  of  the  said 
Office,  the  Same  shall  devolve  on  the  Vice  President,  and  the  Congress 
may  by  Law  provide  for  the  Case  of  Removal,  Death,  Resignation,  or  In- 

1  Superseded  by  Twelfth  Amendment,  which  might  well  have  been  substituted 
for  this  paragraph  in  the  body  of  the  document. 


THE  FEDERAL  CONSTITUTION  7 

ability,  both  of  the  President  and  Vice  President,  declaring  what  Officer 
shall  then  act  as  President,  and  such  Officer  shall  act  accordingly,  until  the 
Disability  be  removed,  or  a  President  shall  be  elected.1 

The  President  shall,  at  stated  Times,  receive  for  his  Services,  a  Com 
pensation,  which  shall  neither  be  encreased  nor  diminished  during  the  Period 
for  which  he  shall  have  been  elected,  and  he  shall  not  receive  within  that 
Period  any  other  Emolument  from  the  United  States,  or  any  of  them.2 

Before  he  enter  on  the  Execution  of  his  Office,  he  shall  take  the  following 
Oath  or  Affirmation : — 

"  I  do  solemnly  swear  (or  affirm)  that  I  will  faithfully  execute  the  Office 
of  President  of  the  United  States,  and  will  to  the  best  of  my  Ability,  pre 
serve,  protect,  and  defend  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States." 

Section  2.  The  President  shall  be  Commander  in  Chief  of  the  Army 
and  Navy  of  the  United  States,  and  of  the  Militia  of  the  several  States,  when 
called  into  the  actual  Service  of  the  United  States;  he  may  require  the 
Opinion,  in  writing,  of  the  principal  Officer  in  each  of  the  executive  Depart 
ments,  upon  any  Subject  relating  to  the  duties  of  their  respective  Offices, 
and  he  shall  have  Power  to  grant  Reprieves  and  Pardons  for  offences  against 
the  United  States,  except  in  Cases  of  Impeachment. 

He  shall  have  Power,  by  and  with  the  Advice  and  Consent  of  the  Senate, 
to  make  Treaties,  provided  two  thirds  of  the  Senators  present  concur;  and 
he  shall  nominate,  and  by  and  with  the  Advice  and  Consent  of  the  Senate, 
shall  appoint  Ambassadors,  other  public  Ministers  and  Consuls,  Judges  of 
the  supreme  Court,  and  all  other  Officers  of  the  United  States,  whose  Appoint 
ments  are  not  herein  otherwise  provided  for,  and  which  shall  be  established 
by  Law :  but  the  Congress  may  by  Law  vest  the  Appointment  of  such  inferior 
Officers,  as  they  think  proper,  in  the  President  alone,  in  the  Courts  of  Law,  or 
in  the  Heads  of  Departments. 

The  President  shall  have  Power  to  fill  up  all  Vacancies  that  may  happen 
during  the  Recess  of  the  Senate,  by  granting  Commissions  which  shall  expire 
at  the  End  of  their  next  Session. 

Section  3.  He  shall  from  time  to  time  give  to  the  Congress  Information 
of  the  State  of  the  Union,  and  recommend  to  their  Consideration  such  Mea 
sures  as  he  shall  judge  necessary  and  expedient ;  he  may,  on  extraordinary 
Occasions,  convene  both  Houses,  or  either  of  them,  and  in  Case  of  Disagree 
ment  between  them,  with  Respect  to  the  Time  of  Adjournment,  he  may  ad 
journ  them  to  such  Time  as  he  shall  think  proper;  he  shall  receive  Am 
bassadors  and  other  public  Ministers ;  he  shall  take  Care  that  the  Laws  be 

1  In  1792  Congress  provided  that  the  president  pro  tern  of  the  Senate  should 
be  next  in  succession,  and  after  him  the  Speaker  of  the  House.     In  1886  (Jan. 
19),  this  undesirable  law  was  supplanted  by  a  new  one  placing  the  succession 
(after  the  Vice  President)  in  the  following  order :    Secretary  of  State-,  Secretary 
of  the  Treasury,  Secretary  of  War,  Attorney  General,  Postmaster  General,  Secre 
tary  of  the  Navy,  Secretary  of  the  Interior. 

2  What  is  the  antecedent  of  "them"?     The  salary  of  George    Washington 
was  fixed  by  the  First  Congress  at  $25,000.     This  amount  remained  unchanged 
until  1871,  when  it  was  made  $50,000.     In  1909  the  salary  was  raised  to  $75,000. 
Large  allowances  are  made  also,  in  these  latter  days,  for  expenses  of  various  sorts, 
—  one  item  of  $25,000,  for  instance,  for  traveling  expenses,  —  which  is  the  reason 
tiie  salary  is  commonly  referred  to  as  $100,000. 


8  APPENDIX 

faithfully  executed,  and  shall  Commission  all  the  Officers  of  the  United  States. 
Section  4.     The  President,  Vice  President,  and  all  civil  Officers  of  the 
United  States  shall  be  removed  from  office  on  Impeachment  for,  and  con 
viction  of,  Treason,  Bribery,  or  other  high  Crimes  and  Misdemeanours. 

ARTICLE  III 

Section  i.  The  judicial  Power  of  the  United  States,  shall  be  vested  in  one 
supreme  Court,  and  in  such  inferior  Courts  as  the  Congress  may  from  time 
to  time  ordain  and  establish.  The  Judges,  both  of  the  supreme  and  inferior 
Courts,  shall  hold  their  Offices  during  good  Behavior,  and  shall,  at  stated 
Times,  receive  for  their  services,  a  Compensation,  which  shall  not  be  dimin 
ished  during  their  Continuance  in  Office. 

Section  2.  The  judicial  Power  shall  extend  to  all  Cases,  in  Law  and 
Equity,  arising  under  this  Constitution,  the  Laws  of  the  United  States,  and 
Cases  affecting  Ambassadors,  other  public  Ministers  and  Consuls;  —  to  all 
Treaties  made,  or  which  shall  be  made,  under  their  Authority ;  —  to  all 
Cases  of  admiralty  and  maritime  Jurisdiction ;  —  to  Controversies  to  which 
the  United  States  shall  be  a  Party ;  —  to  Controversies  between  two  or  more 
States ;  —  between  a  State  and  Citizens  or  another  State  l  ;  —  between 
Citizens  of  different  States,  —  between  Citizens  of  the  same  State  claiming 
lands  under  Grants  of  different  States,  —  and  between  a  State,  or  the  Citizens 
thereof,  and  foreign  States,  Citizens  or  Subjects. 

In  all  Cases  affecting  Ambassadors,  other  public  Ministers  and  Consuls, 
and  those  in  which  a  State  shall  be  Party,  the  supreme  Court  shall  have 
original  Jurisdiction.  In  all  the  other  Cases  before  mentioned,  the  supreme 
Court  shall  have  appellate  Jurisdiction,  both  as  to  Law  and  Fact,  with  such 
Exceptions,  and  under  such  Regulations  as  the  Congress  shall  make. 

The  trial  of  all  Crimes,  except  hi  Cases  of  Impeachment,  shall  be  by  Jury ; 
and  such  Trial  shall  be  held  in  the  State  where  the  said  Crimes  shall  have 
been  committed ;  but  when  not  committed  within  any  State,  the  Trial  shall 
be  at  such  Place  or  Places  as  the  Congress  may  by  Law  have  directed. 

Section  3.  Treason  against  the  United  States,  shall  consist  only  in  levy 
ing  War  against  them,  or  in  adhering  to  their  Enemies,  giving  them  Aid  and 
Comfort.  No  Person  shall  be  convicted  of  Treason  unless  on  the  Testimony 
of  two  Witnesses  to  the  same  overt  Act,  or  on  Confession  in  open  Court. 

The  Congress  shall  have  Power  to  declare  the  Punishment  of  Treason, 
but  no  attainder  of  Treason  shall  work  Corruption  of  Blood,  or  Forfeiture 
except  during  the  Life  of  the  Person  attainted. 

(On  the  appellate  jurisdiction,  cf.  pages  395,  396.  Section  25  of  the 
Judiciary  Act  of  1789,  still  in  force,  defines  that  jurisdiction  as  follows  : 

"And  be  it  further  enacted,  That  a  final  judgment  or  decree  in  any 
suit,  in  the  highest  court  of  law  or  equity  of  a  State  in  which  a  decision 
in  the  suit  could  be  had,  when  is  drawn  in  question  the  validity  of  a  treaty 
or  statute  of,  or  an  authority  exercised  under,  the  United  States,  and  the 
decision  is  against  their  validity ;  or  when  is  drawn  in  question  the  validity 
of  a  statute  of,  or  an  authority  exercised  under,  any  State,  on  the  ground 

1  Limited  by  the  Eleventh  Amendment  to  cases  begun  by  a  State. 


THE  FEDERAL  CONSTITUTION  9 

of  their  being  repugnant  to  the  Constitution,  treaties,  or  laws  of  the 
United  States,  and  the  decision  is  in  favor  of  such  their  validity ;  or  when 
is  drawn  in  question  the  construction  of  any  clause  of  the  Constitution, 
or  of  a  treaty,  or  statute  of,  or  commission  held  under,  the  United  States, 
and  the  decision  is  against  the  title,  right,  privilege,  or  exemption,  specially 
set  up  or  claimed  .  f.  .  under  such  clause  of  the  said  Constitution,  treaty, 
statute,  or  commission,  may  be  re-examined,  and  revised  or  affirmed  in 
the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  upon  a  writ  of  error  .  .  ." 

The  "inferior  courts"  at  present  (1920)  are,  from  the  bottom  up:  — 

1.  District    Courts.     Over   ninety.     The   law   of    1789   provided   for 
thirteen. 

2.  Circuit  Courts.     Nine,  each  three  justices.     The  first  law,  1789, 
provided  three  circuit  courts,  but  no  special  circuit  judges ;  a  circuit  court 
then  consisted  of  a  justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  "or  circuit"  and  one  or 
more  judges  of  district  courts  included  within  the  circuit.     This  remained 
the  rule  with  a  brief  attempt  at  change  in  1801,  until  1866,  when  sepa 
rate  circuit  justices  were  provided. 

3.  Circuit  Courts  of  Appeals.     One  for  each  of  the  nine  circuits,  com 
posed  of  a  justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  and  of  other  Federal  judges  — 
not  less  than  three  in  all,  and  not  including  any  justice  from  whose  deci 
sion  the  appeal  is  taken.     This  order  of  courts  was  instituted  in  1891,  to 
relieve  the  Supreme  Court  which  was  then  hopelessly  overburdened  with 
appeals  from  lower  courts.     In  most  cases  the  decision  of  a  circuit  court 
of  appeals  is  final. 

4.  The  Supreme  Court.     One  Chief  Justice  and  eight  Associate  Jus 
tices.     Its  business  now  is  confined  very  largely  to  those  supremely  impor 
tant  matters  specified  in  the  Constitution  and  in  the  law  of  1789  quoted 
above. 

There  are  also  two  special  courts,  somewhat  outside  this  system : 
(1)  the  Federal  Court  of  Claims,  to  determine  money  claims  against  the 
United  States,  established  in  1855  ;  (2)  Court  of  Customs  Appeals,  estab 
lished  in  1909.) 

ARTICLE  IV 

Section  i.  Full  Faith  and  Credit  shall  be  given  in  each  State  to  the  public 
Acts,  Records,  and  judicial  Proceedings  of  every  other  State.  And  the 
Congress  may  by  general  Laws  prescribe  the  Manner  in  which  such  Acts, 
Records  and  Proceedings  shall  be  proved,  and  the  Effect  thereof. 

Section  2.  The  Citizens  of  each  State  shall  be  entitled  to  all  Privileges 
and  immunities  of  Citizens  in  the  several  States. 

A  Person  charged  in  any  State  with  Treason,  Felony,  or  other  Crime, 
who  shall  flee  from  Justice,  and  be  found  in  another  State,  shall  on  Demand 
of  the  executive  Authority  of  the  State  from  which  he  fled,  be  delivered  up, 
to  be  removed  to  the  State  having  Jurisdiction  of  the  Crime. 

[No  Person  held  to  Service  or  Labour  in  one  State,  under  the  Laws  thereof 
escaping  into  another,  shall,  hi  Consequence  of  any  Law  or  Regulation  therein, 


10  APPENDIX 

be  discharged  from  such  Service  or  Labour,  but  shall  be  delivered  up  on 
Claim  of  the  Party  to  whom  such  Service  or  Labour  may  be  due].1 

Section  3.  New  States  may  be  admitted  by  the  Congress  into  this  Union; 
but  no  new  State  shall  be  formed  or  erected  within  the  Jurisdiction  of  any 
other  State ;  nor  any  State  be  formed  by  the  Junction  of  two  or  more  States, 
or  Parts  of  States,  without  the  Consent  of  the  Legislatures  of  the  States  con 
cerned  as  well  as  of  the  Congress. 

The  Congress  shall  have  Power  to  dispose  of  and  make  all  needful  Rules 
and  Regulations  respecting  the  Territory  or  other  Property  belonging  to  the 
United  States ;  and  nothing  hi  this  Constitution  shall  be  so  construed  as  to 
Prejudice  any  Claims  of  the  United  States,  or  of  any  particular  State. 

Section  4.  The  United  States  shall  guarantee  to  every  State  hi  this  Union 
a  Republican  Form  of  Government,  and  shall  protect  each  of  them  against 
Invasion ;  and  on  Application  of  the  Legislature,  or  of  the  Executive  (when  the 
Legislature  cannot  be  convened)  against  domestic  Violence. 

ARTICLE   V 

The  Congress,  whenever  two  thirds  of  both  Houses  shall  deem  it  necessary, 
shall  propose  Amendments  to  this  Constitution,  or,  on  the  Application  of  the 
Legislatures  of  two  thirds  of  the  several  States,  shall  call  a  Convention  for 
proposing  Amendments,  which,  in  either  Case,  shall  be  valid  to  all  Intents  and 
Purposes,  as  Part  of  this  Constitution,  when  ratified  by  the  Legislatures  of 
three  fourths  of  the  several  States,  or  by  Conventions  in  three  fourths  thereof, 
as  the  one  or  the  other  Mode  of  Ratification  may  be  proposed  by  the  Congress ; 
Provided  [that  no  Amendment  which  may  be  made  prior  to  the  Year  One 
thousand  eight  hundred  and  eight  shall  in  any  Manner  affect  the  first  and 
fourth  Clauses  in  the  Ninth  Section  of  the  first  Article ;  and]  that  no  State, 
without  its  Consent,  shall  be  deprived  of  its  equal  Suffrage  in  the  Senate. 

ARTICLE  VI 

All  Debts  contracted  and  Engagements  entered  into,  before  the  Adoption 
of  this  Constitution,  shall  be  as  valid  against  the  United  States  under  this 
Constitution,  as  under  the  Confederation. 

This  Constitution,  and  the  Laws  of  the  United  States  which  shall  be  made 
in  Pursuance  thereof ;  and  all  Treaties  made,  or  which  shall  be  made,  under 
the  Authority  of  the  United  States,  shall  be  the  supreme  Law  of  the  Land; 
and  the  Judges  in  every  State  shall  be  bound  thereby,  any  Thing  in  the 
Constitution  or  Laws  of  any  State  to  the  Contrary  notwithstanding. 

The  Senators  and  Representatives  before  mentioned,  and  the  Members 
of  the  several  State  Legislatures,  and  all  executive  and  judicial  Officers,  both 
of  the  United  States  and  of  the  several  States,  shall  be  bound  by  Oath  or 
Affirmation,  to  support  this  Constitution ;  but  no  religious  Test  shall  ever  be 
required  as  a  Qualification  to  any  Office  or  public  Trust  under  the  United 
States. 

1  Superseded,  so  far  as  slaves  are  meant,  by  the  Thirteenth  Amendment. 


THE  FEDERAL  CONSTITUTION  11 

ARTICLE  VII 

The  Ratification  of  the  Conventions  of  nine  States,  shall  be  sufficient  for 
the  Establishment  of  this  Constitution  between  the  States  so  ratifying  the 
Same. 

AMENDMENT 


Congress  shall  make  no  law  respecting  an  establishment  of  religion,  or 
prohibiting  the  free  exercise  thereof;  or  abridging  the  freedom  of  speech, 
or  of  the  press ;  or  the  right  of  the  people  peaceably  to  assemble,  and  to  petition 
the  Government  for  a  redress  of  grievances. 

[ii] 

A  well  regulated  Militia,  being  necessary  to  the  security  of  a  free  State, 
the  right  of  the  people  to  keep  and  bear  Arms,  shall  not  be  infringed. 

[iii] 

No  Soldier  shall,  in  time  of  peace  be  quartered  in  any  house,  without  the 
consent  of  the  Owner,  nor  in  time  of  war,  but  in  a  manner  to  be  prescribed 
by  Law. 

[iv] 

The  right  of  the  people  to  be  secure,  in  their  persons,  houses,  papers,  and 
effects,  against  unreasonable  searches  and  seizures,  shall  not  be  violated,  and 
no  Warrants  shall  issue,  but  upon  probable  cause,  supported  by  Oath  or 
affirmation,  and  particularly  describing  the  place  to  be  searched,  and  the 
persons  or  things  to  be  seized. 

[v] 

No  person  shall  be  held  to  answer  for  a  capital,  or  otherwise  infamous  crime, 
unless  on  a  presentment  or  indictment  of  a  Grand  Jury  except  in  cases  arising 
in  the  land  or  naval  forces,  or  in  the  Militia,  when  in  actual  service  in  time  of 
War  or  public  danger ;  nor  shall  any  person  be  subject  for  the  same  offence 
to  be  twice  put  in  jeopardy  of  life  or  limb ;  nor  shall  be  compelled  in  any 
criminal  case  to  be  a  witness  against  himself,  nor  be  deprived  of  life,  liberty, 
or  property,  without  due  process  of  law ;  nor  shall  private  property  be  taken  for 
public  use,  without  just  compensation. 

[vi] 

In  all  criminal  prosecutions  the  accused  shall  enjoy  the  right  to  a  speedy 
and  public  trial,  by  an  impartial  jury  of  the  State  and  district  wherein  the  crime 
shall  have  been  committed,  which  district  shall  have  been  previously  ascer 
tained  by  law,  and  to  be  informed  of  the  nature  and  cause  of  the  accusation ; 
to  be  confronted  with  the  witnesses  against  him ;  to  have  compulsory  process 
for  obtaining  witnesses  in  his  favor,  and  to  have  the  Assistance  of  Counsel  for 
his  defence. 

1  Originally,  the  first  twelve  amendments  were  not  numbered  in  the  official 
manuscript. 


12  APPENDIX 

[vii] 

In  suits  at  common  law,  where  the  value  in  controversy  shall  exceed  twenty 
dollars,  the  right  of  trial  by  jury  shall  be  preserved,  and  no  fact  tried  by  a 
jury  shall  be  otherwise  re-examined  hi  any  Court  of  the  United  States,  than 
according  to  the  rules  of  the  common  law. 

[viii] 

Excessive  bail  shall  not  be  required,  nor  excessive  fines  imposed,  nor  cruel 
and  unusual  punishments  inflicted. 

[ix] 

The  enumeration  in  the  Constitution,  of  certain  rights,  shall  not  be  con 
strued  to  deny  or  disparage  others  retained  by  the  people. 


The  powers  not  delegated  to  the  United  States  by  the  Constitution,  nor 
prohibited  by  it  to  the  States,  are  reserved  to  the  States  respectively  or  to 
the  people. 

[a]  (1798) 

The  judicial  power  of  the  United  States  shall  not  be  construed  to  extend 
to  any  suit  in  law  or  equity,  commenced  or  prosecuted  against  one  of  the  United 
States  by  Citizens  of  another  State,  or  by  Citizens  or  Subjects  of  any  Foreign 
State. 

[xii]  (1804) 

The  Electors  shall  meet  in  their  respective  State,  and  vote  by  ballot  for 
President  and  Vice  President,  one  of  whom,  at  least,  shall  not  be  an  inhabitant 
of  the  same  State  with  themselves  ;  they  shall  name  in  their  ballots  the  person 
voted  for  as  President,  and  in  distinct  ballots  the  person  voted  for  as  Vice 
President,  and  they  shall  make  distinct  lists  of  all  persons  voted  for  as  Presi 
dent,  and  of  all  persons  voted  for  as  Vice  President,  and  of  the  numbers  of 
votes  for  each,  which  lists  they  shall  sign  and  certify,  and  transmit  sealed  to 
the  seat  of  the  government  of  the  United  States,  directed  to  the  President  of 
the  Senate  ;  —  The  President  of  the  Senate  shall,  hi  the  presence  of  the  Senate 
and  House  of  Representatives,  open  all  the  certificates  and  the  votes  shall 
then  be  counted  ;  —  The  person  having  the  greatest  number  of  votes  for  Presi 
dent,  shall  be  the  President,  if  such  number  be  a  majority  of  the  whole  number 
of  Electors  appointed;  and  if  no  person  have  such  majority,  then  from  the 
persons  having  the  highest  numbers  not  exceeding  three  on  the  list  of  those 
voted  for  as  President,  the  House  of  Representatives  shall  choose  immediately, 
by  ballot,  the  President.  But  in  choosing  the  President,  the  votes  shall  be 
taken  by  States,  the  representation  from  each  State  having  one  vote;  a 
quorum  for  this  purpose  shall  consist  of  a  member  or  members  from  two  thirds 
of  the  States,  and  a  majority  of  all  the  States  shall  be  necessary  to  a  choice. 
And  if  the  House  of  Representatives  shall  not  choose  a  President  whenever  the 
right  of  choice  shall  devolve  upon  them,  before  the  fourth  day  of  March  next 

1  These  first  ten  amendments  were  in  force  after  November  3,  1791. 


THE  FEDERAL  CONSTITUTION  13 

following,  then  the  Vice  President  shall  act  as  President,  as  in  the  case  of 
the  death  or  other  constitutional  disability  of  the  President.  —  The  person 
having  the  greatest  number  of  votes  as  Vice  President,  shall  be  the  Vice 
President,  if  such  number  be  a  majority  of  the  whole  number  of  Electors 
appointed,  and  if  no  person  have  a  majority,  then  from  the  two  highest  numbers 
on  the  list,  the  Senate  shall  choose  the  Vice  President ;  a  quorum  for  the  pur 
pose  shall  consist  of  two  thirds  of  the  whole  number  of  Senators,  and  a 
majority  of  the  whole  number  shall  be  necessary  to  a  choice.  But  no  person 
constitutionally  ineligible  to  the  office  of  President  shall  be  eligible  to  that  of 
Vice  President  of  the  United  States. 


xiii  (1865) 

Section  i.  Neither  slavery  nor  involuntary  servitude,  except  as  a  punish 
ment  for  crime  whereof  the  party  shall  have  been  duly  convicted,  shall  exist 
within  the  United  States,  or  any  place  subject  to  their  jurisdiction. 

Section  2.  Congress  shall  have  power  to  enforce  this  article  by  appropriate 
legislation. 

xiv  (1868) 

Section  i.  All  persons  born  or  naturalized  hi  the  United  States,  and  subject 
to  the  jurisdiction  thereof ,  are  citizens  of  the  United  States  and  of  the  State 
wherein  they  reside.  No  State  shall  make  or  enforce  any  law  which  shall 
abridge  the  privileges  or  immunities  of  citizens  of  the  United  States:  nor 
shall  any  State  deprive  any  person  of  life,  liberty,  or  property,  without  due 
process  of  law ;  nor  deny  to  any  person  within  its  jurisdiction  the  equal  pro 
tection  of  the  laws. 

Section  2.  Representatives  shall  be  apportioned  among  the  several  States 
according  to  their  respective  numbers,  counting  the  whole  number  of  persons 
in  each  State,  excluding  Indians  not  taxed.  But  when  the  right  to  vote  at  any 
election  for  the  choice  of  electors  for  President  and  Vice  President  of  the 
United  States,  Representatives  hi  Congress,  the  Executive  and  Judicial  officers 
of  a  State,  or  the  members  of  the  Legislature  thereof,  is  denied  to  any  of  the 
male  inhabitants  of  such  State,  being  twenty-one  years  of  age,  and  citizens  of 
the  United  States,  or  in  any  way  abridged,  except  for  participation  in  rebellion, 
or  other  crime,  the  basis  of  representation  therein  shall  be  reduced  in  the 
proportion  which  the  number  of  such  male  citizens  shall  bear  to  the  whole 
number  of  male  citizens  twenty-one  years  of  age  in  such  State. 

Section  3.  No  person  shall  be  a  Senator  or  Representative  in  Congress,  or 
elector  of  President  and  Vice .  President,  or  hold  any  office,  civil  or  military, 
under  the  United  States,  or  under  any  State,  who,  having  previously  taken  an 
oath,  as  a  member  of  Congress,  or  as  an  officer  of  the  United  States,  or  as  a 
member  of  any  State  legislature,  or  as  an  executive  or  judicial  officer  of  any 
State,  to  support  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  shall  have  engaged  in 
insurrection  or  rebellion  against  the  same,  or  given  aid  or  comfort  to  the 
enemies  thereof.  But  Congress  may  by  a  vote  of  two  thirds  of  each  House, 
remove  such  disability. 

Section  4.  The  validity  of  the  public  debt  of  the  United  States,  authorized 
by  law,  including  debts  incurred  for  payment  of  pensions  and  bounties  for 
services  in  suppressing  insurrection  or  rebellion,  shall  not  be  questioned. 
But  neither  the  United  States  nor  any  State  shall  assume  or  pay  any  debt  or 


14  APPENDIX 

obligation  incurred  in  aid  of  insurrection  or  rebellion  against  the  United  States, 
or  any  claim  for  the  loss  or  emancipation  of  any  slave ;  but  all  such  debts,  ob 
ligations  and  claims  shall  be  held  illegal  and  void. 

Section  5.  The  Congress  shall  have  power  to  enforce,  by  appropriate  legis 
lation,  the  provisions  of  this  article. 

xv  (1870) 

Section  i.  The  right  of  citizens  of  the  United  States  to  vote  shall  not  be 
denied  or  abridged  by  the  United  States  or  by  any  State  on  account  of  race, 
color,  or  previous  condition  of  servitude. 

Section  2.  The  Congress  shall  have  power  to  enforce  this  article  by  appro 
priate  legislation. 

xvi  (1913) 

The  Congress  shall  have  power  to  lay  and  collect  taxes  on  incomes,  from 
whatever  source  derived,  without  apportionment  among  the  States,  and  with 
out  regard  to  any  census  or  enumeration. 

xvii  (1913) 

The  Senate  of  the  United  States  shall  be  composed  of  two  Senators  from 
each  State,  elected  by  the  people  thereof  for  six  years ;  and  each  Senator 
shall  have  one  vote.  The  electors  in  each  State  shall  have  the  qualifications 
requisite  for  electors  of  the  most  numerous  branch  of  the  State  Legislatures. 

When  vacancies  happen  in  the  representation  of  any  State  hi  the  Senate, 
the  executive  authority  of  such  State  shall  issue  writs  of  election  to  fill  such 
vacancies:  Provided,  that  the  Legislature  of  any  State  may  empower  the 
executive  thereof  to  make  temporary  appointments  until  the  people  fill  the 
vacancies  by  election  as  the  legislature  may  direct. 

xviii  (1919) 

Section  i.  After  one  year  from  the  ratification  of  this  article,  the  manu 
facture,  sale,  or  transportation  of  intoxicating  liquors  within,  the  importation 
thereof  into,  or  the  exportation  thereof  from  the  United  States  and  all  territory 
subject  to  the  jurisdiction  thereof,  for  beverage  purposes,  is  hereby  prohibited. 

Section  2.  The  Congress  and  the  several  States  shall  have  concurrent 
power  to  enforce  this  article  by  appropriate  legislation. 

Section  3.  (Declares  the  article  inoperative  unless  ratified  within  seven 
years.) 

xix  (1920) 

Section  i.  The  right  of  citizens  of  the  United  States  to  vote  shall  not  be 
denied  or  abridged  by  the  United  States  or  by  any  State  on  account  of  sex. 

Section  2.  The  Congress  shall  have  power  by  appropriate  legislation  to 
enforce  the  provisions  of  this  article. 


INDEX 


Abolitionists,  484  ff. ;  political,  489-90. 
See  Slavery. 

Adams,  Charles  Francis,  at  London  dur 
ing  Civil  War,  551,  552. 

Adams,  Henry,  on  Virginia  settlement, 
14;  on  American  life  in  1800,  347; 
on  War  of  1812,  383-4. 

Adams,  John,  on  danger  of  ecclesiastical 
interference  by  England,  175,  note; 
defense  of  British  soldiers  after  Boston 
Massacre,  196 ;  and  the  horse-jockey 
client,  206 ;  on  resolution  for  State 
governments,  213 ;  on  vote  for  in 
dependence,  216-217  ;  on  "  manu 
facture  of  state  governments,"  217 ; 
and  peace  negotiations  in  1783,  233, 
234 ;  elected  Vice  President,  301 ;  and 
titles,  301-303;  characterized  by 
Maclay,  302,  note;  reelection,  318; 
account  of  "  Caucus,  "  318-319  ;  elec 
tion  to  presidency,  318 ;  dread  of 
party  government,  319-20;  treaty  of 
1800  with  France,  327  ;  administration 
of,  327  ff . ;  Fries'  Rebellion,  327-328 ; 
and  Alien-Sedition  laws,  328-329; 
and  "  Midnight  Judges,  "  332-333 ; 
opposes  extension  of  suffrage,  453. 

Adams,  John  Quincy,  and  Peace  of 
Ghent,  386 ;  and  claims  to  Oregon, 
406-407 ;  and  Monroe  Doctrine, 
407-410;  President,  418-419;  and 
election  of  1828,  462,  463  ;  and  civil 
service,  458 ;  and  right  of  petition, 
488-9  ;  advises  New  England  seces 
sion  if  Texas  were  annexed,  491. 

Adams,  Samuel,  "  man  of  the  town  meet 
ing,  "  197 ;  and  committees  of  corre 
spondence,  197 ;  and  ratification  of  the 
Constitution,  296,  298  ;  on  democracy, 
353. 

Administrations,  presidential,  table  of, 
577. 

Agassiz,  444. 

Agriculture,  in  1800,  346;  intellect 
applied  to,  351-2 ;  farm  machinery, 
517  ;  and  Morrill  Bill,  545  ;  in  "  New 
South,  "  582  ;  and  marketing  prob 
lems  :  politics  and  cooperation,  see 
Grangers,  N on- Partisans. 


Aguinaldo,  617. 

Airplanes,  in  World  War,  705-6. 

Alabama,  admitted,  402. 

Alabama,  The,  551-2 ;  and  arbitration, 
565-6. 

Alamo,  massacre  at,  490. 

Alaska,  southern  boundary  fixed,  409, 
491 ;  purchased,  565. 

Algonkin  Indians,  5. 

Alien  and  Sedition  Acts  of  1797,  328-9. 

Amending  clauses  in  constitutions,  in 
Penn's  charter,  131 ;  in  Revolutionary 
State  constitutions,  221-2  ;  in  Articles 
of  Confederation,  268;  results  of 
difficulty  of  in  Federal  Constitution, 
285. 

Amendments  to  Federal  Constitution, 
difficulty  of,  and  results,  285 ;  first 
ten  ("  bill  of  rights"),  307-8;  Elev 
enth,  306-7;  and  judicial  inter 
pretation,  415;  Twelfth,  334; 
Thirteenth,  548-9;  Fourteenth,  560; 
and  judicial  interpertation,  564;  a 
bulwark  for  big  business  privilege, 
640  ;  Fifteenth,  561  ;  Sixteenth,  677  ; 
Seventeenth,  668-9,  677 ;  Eighteenth, 
671 ;  Nineteenth,  669-671.  See  Con 
stitution  in  appendix. 

America,  Discovery  of,  7. 

America,  society  in  colonial  times,  145- 
167;  in  1800,  342-351;  in  1830, 
421  ff. ;  and  intellectual  ferment  of 
that  period,  446-8 ;  in  1860,  516-22. 

American  Colonization  Society,  480. 

American  Federation  of  Labor,  647 ;  and 
the  World  War,  716. 

American  party  ("Know-Nothings"), 
506. 

American  Revolution,  preparation  for  in 
Intercolonial  wars,  168-171 ;  supposed 
need  of  English  protection,  173 ; 
opposition  to  standing  army,  173 ; 
Sugar  Act  of  1764,  174;  Stamp  Act, 
174-5 ;  underlying  causes  of,  175  ff. ; 
colonial  system  outgrown,  175-6 ; 
American  and  English  interpretations 
of  "  No  taxation  without  representa 
tion,  "  176-9 ;  problem  of  imperial 
unity,  179-82;  and  Edmund  Burke, 


15 


16 


INDEX 


181-2;  and  George  III,  182;  a 
"civil  war,"  183-4;  and  social 
revolution  in  America,  184-7 ;  and 
labor,  186 ;  opens  more  equal  oppor 
tunities,  186-7  ;  ten  years  pf  agitation, 
188-205  ;  resistance  to  Stamp  Act,  and 
repeal,  188-191 ;  new  taxes  on 
America,  192  ff. ;  internal  and  external 
taxation,  192-3 ;  mob  violence  and 
denial  of  jury  trial,  193 ;  Virginia's 
resolutions  of  1769,  193-4;  Boston 
Massacre,  194-6 ;  failure  of  Town- 
shend  acts,  196 ;  repeal  of  all  but  tea 
tax,  196 ;  Revolutionary  committees 
of  correspondence,  197—8 ;  and  of 
intercolonial  union,  198  ;  and  the  tea 
ships,  199-201 ;  Boston  Port  Bill, 
201 ;  Virginia  suggests  Continental 
Congress,  202-4;  First  Continental 
Congress,  204-5  ;  .  recommendations 
enforced  by  revolutionary  means, 
206-7  ;  Revolutionary  de  facto  govern 
ments,  207-208 ;  evolve  into  new 
States,  208  ff. ;  "  thirteen  revolu 
tions,"  209-10;  Virginia  as  a  type 
and  a  leader,  210-11 ;  slow  growth  of 
idea  of  independence,  211-2;  and 
Paine's  Common  Sense,  212 ;  decision 
for  independence,  214-215 ;  and 
French  influence,  214  and  note ; 
Declaration  of  Independence,  215- 
216 ;  campaigns,  217 ;  new  State 
constitutions,  217-23 ;  Congress  and 
the  War,  224-32;  lack  of  American 
unity,  224 ;  inefficiency  of  Congress, 
224-6;  paper  money,  226-8;  cam 
paigns  in  '77-78,  228;  and  the 
French  alliance,  228-9;  later  cam 
paigns,  230-231 ;  and  the  Loyalists, 
231-2;  Cornwallis'  surrender,  232; 
peace  negotiations  and  treaty,  233-5 ; 
meaning  of,  in  history,  236. 

Ames,  Fisher,  decries  democracy,  334, 
336. 

Andros,  Sir  Edmund,  116-7. 

Anesthetics,  discovery  of,  450. 

Angell,  James  B.,  589. 

Annapolis  Convention,  273. 

Anthony,  Susan  B.,  669.  See  Nine 
teenth  Amendment. 

Antietam,  534. 

Antifederalists,  294-5. 

Appalachians,  effect  on  early  settlement, 
4. 

Appeals  from  colonial  courts  to  England, 
112,  114,  118,  129,  141. 


Arbitration,  International,  and  Jay 
Treaty,  325  ;  and  Maine  boundary  in 
1840,  477;  and  the  Alabama,  565-6; 
failure  of  attempt  at  standing  treaty 
with  England,  612 ;  see  Hague  Con 
gresses:  and  the  reactionary  Senate, 
624;  Bryan's  "cooling  off"  treaties, 
624 ;  and  League  of  Nations,  738. 

Archbold  (Justice),  impeachment  of, 
362,  633,  note. 

Arizona,  582  ;   and  the  recall,  668. 

Arkansas,  422. 

Arthur,  Chester  A.,  591,  592,  593-4. 

Articles  of  Confederation,  250-1,  261. 
See  Federal  Constitution. 

Astor,  John  Jacob,  344,  379. 

Astoria,  379,  406. 

Atlanta,  in  the  Civil  War,  539. 

Attainder,  in  the  Revolution,  231  and 
note ;  in  Federal  Constitution,  29 1 ,  note. 

Audubon,  444. 

Australian  ballot,  655. 

Austria,  see  World  War. 

Avalon,  Baltimore's  province  of,  42. 

Bacon's  Rebellion,  122-3. 

Balkans,  the,  as  seed  plot  for  the  World 
War,  688-95. 

Ballinger,  Richard,  675. 

Ballot,  evolution  of  in  America,  82-4. 
See  Australian  ballot. 

Barbary  Pirates,  War  with;  359. 

"  Barnburners,  "  the,  49. 

Barter,  trade  by  in  early  colonies,  162-3  ; 
in  the  early  West,  245-6. 

Belgium,  and  World  War,  703-6 

Belleau  Wood,  726. 

Benton,  Thomas  H.,  and  Oregon,  407, 
494;  on  "panic"  of  1819,  413;  and 
Jackson,  462  ff. ;  and  free  access  to 
public  domain,  462. 

Berkeley,  Sir  William,  41,  120  ff. 

Berlin,  Congress  of  1878  at,  and  World 
War,  691. 

Bessemer  steel,  583. 

Bethmann-Hollweg,  701. 

Bicameral  legislature,  demanded  in 
Maryland,  44;  secured  earlier  in 
Mass.,  86-8,  97  ;  relation  of  the  two 
houses,  142-3 ;  in  Revolutionary 
State  constitutions,  222-3. 

Biddle,  Nicholas,  464,  465  ;  and  artificial 
panic  of  1835,  469-470. 

"  Big  business,  "  growth  of  after  rail 
way  and  telegraph,  516;  after  1865, 
574-5;  after  1880,  585-6;  gains 


INDEX 


17 


and  costs,  586 ;  and  business  im 
morality,  586-7,  625-7;  monopo 
listic  character  of,  635-6;  "trusts," 
636—40 ;  and  fourteenth  amendment, 
640;  and  "money  power,"  641; 
and  "  panics,  "  ib.,  and  corrupt 
politics,  642-5 ;  and  Roosevelt, 
673-4  ;  international  competition  of, 
and  war,  684-7. 

Bills  of  Rights,  in  first  Virginia  con 
stitution,  214-5;  in  other  Revo 
lutionary  State  constitutions,  220- 
221 ;  in  Northwest  Ordinance,  255 ; 
none  in  Federal  Constitution  as 
adopted,  291  and  note ;  added  by 
first  ten  amendments,  307-8. 

Birney,  James  G.,  political  abolitionist, 
487,  492. 

"  Black  Friday,  "  603. 

Black  Hawk  War,  469,  note. 

Elaine,  James  G.,  572  and  note,  594, 
595,  610,  622. 

"  Blue  Laws,  "  colonial,  145-7. 

"  Body  of  Liberties,"  of  early  Massachu- 
.  setts,  85-6. 

Bolshevists,  the,  718,  743-7. 

Bonaparte,  Napoleon,  and  Louisiana, 
370-1  ;  and  American  commerce  be 
fore  1812,  380-3. 

Boone,  Daniel,  241,  242,  243,  244. 

Boone's  Fort,  166. 

"  Boss,"  in  politics,  460-1. 

Boston,  early  history,  65,  83,  94,  142. 

Boston  Centinel,  the,  and  second  and 
third  "  pillars,  "  390-1. 

"  Boston  Massacre,  "  the,  194-6. 

Bowdoin,  James,  133. 

Bradford,  William,  on  Gorges,  48 ;  on 
Plymouth  history,  50,  61 ;  governor 
and  trustee,  57,  58,  60 ;  on  Roger 
Williams,  93. 

Brandeis,  Louis,  653. 

Breckenridge,  John  C.,  523,  524,  525. 

Brest-Litovsk,  Peace  of,  724. 

Bristow,  Banjamin  H.,  567. 

Brook  Farm,  448. 

Brooke,  Lord,  on  religious  freedom,  96- 
7 ;  and  Massachusetts,  97. 

Brown,  John,  in  Kansas,  509  ;  at  Harpers 
Ferry,  515. 

Brown  University,  152. 

Bryan,  William  J.,  in  1896,  607-9; 
reviled  by  conservatives,  608;  and 
"  cooling  off "  treaties,  624 ;  and 
campaign  of  1912,  677-9;  and  the 
World  War,  716. 


Bryant,  William  Cullen,  444. 

Bryce,  James  (Lord),  on  the  West,  237; 
on  judicial  amendment  of  the  Con 
stitution,  285. 

Buchanan,  James,  494,  510,  511,  513, 
514,  528,  531. 

Bull  Run,  battle  of,  534. 

Burgoyne's  capture,  228. 

Burke,  Edmund,  on  American  taxation, 
181-2. 

Butler,  Benjamin  F.,  and  "contraband," 
546. 

Byrd,  William  (Colonel),  124-5. 

Cabinet,  the  President's,  evolution  of, 
304,  305  and  note. 

Cabot,  George,  decries  democracy,  334. 

Cahokia,  233,  236. 

Calhoun,  John  C.,  a  "  war  hawk,  "  382, 
383  ;  and  the  Bonus  Bill,  398 ;  change 
on  the  tariff,  463 ;  and  nullification, 
463,  465-6 ;  and  Jackson,  469  and 
note ;  and  slavery,  482  ff. ;  and 
squatter  sovereignty,  497 ;  opposes 
Compromise  of  1850,  502;  plan  for 
dual  presidency,  502. 

California,  and  Mexican  War,  493-4; 
discovery  of  gold,  498 ;  growth  and 
turbulence,  398-9;  vigilantes,  499; 
and  President  Taylor,  499  ;  admitted 
"  free,  "  499-501 ;  and  Southern 
Pacific  R.R.,  640;  and  Hiram  John 
son,  640 ;  progressiveness,  653,  664-5, 
668. 

California  vs.  Southern  Pacific,  the  case 
of,  640. 

Calvert,  Cecilius,  42. 

Calvert,  George  (first  Lord  Baltimore), 
41-2. 

Calvin,  John,  and  democracy,  76. 

Canada,  see  France  in  America;  be 
comes  English,  137,  169;  effect  of 
this  change  on  American  Revolution, 
168-9  ;  and  Quebec  Act,  201  and  note ; 
and  Treaty  of  1783,  233,  234;  and 
World  War,  704. 

Canning,  George,  insolence  toward 
America,  380 ;  and  Holy  Alliance,  and 
Monroe  Doctrine,  407-8. 

Capitalist  system,  rise  of,  429-30. 

Carolinas,  the,  107,  127 ;  Huguenots  in, 
ib.,  royal  province,  140;  and  the 
democratic  western  counties,  185-6. 
See  North  and  South  Carolina. 

Carpetbaggers,  561-2. 

Carranza,  683. 


18 


INDEX 


Carver,  John,  54,  58. 

Cass,  Lewis,  492,  498. 

Caucus,  John  Adams'  account  of  at 
Boston,  318-9;  and  rise  of  Con 
gressional  for  nomination  of  presi 
dential  candidates,  ib. ;  overthrow  of 
"  King  Caucus,  "  418. 

Centralization,  in  New  France,  12-3. 

Champlain,  Samuel  de,  founds  Quebec, 
9  ;  and  Iroquois,  10. 

Channing,  William  Ellery,  and  labor, 
434 ;  and  Unitarianism,  445-6 ;  and 
abolitionism,  485. 

Charter  colonies,  and  other  classes,  MO- 
HI. 

Chase,  Salmon  P.,  abolitionist,  489; 
Secretary  of  Treasury,  543-4 ;  posi 
tion  as  Chief  Justice  on  Legal  Tender 
cases,  564. 

Chase,  Samuel  (Justice),  on  Declaration 
of  Independence,  260-261 ;  denun 
ciation  of  democracy,  361 ;  attempt 
to  impeach,  362. 

Chateau  Thierry,  726. 

Chattanooga,  537. 

Chicago,  beginnings  of,  423. 

Child  labor,  in  New  England  in  1830, 
431-3;  in  the  New  South,  653-4, 
682. 

Children's  Bureau,  654. 

China,  and  the  open  door,  620 ;  and 
territorial  integrity,  620;  and  the 
World  War,  717;  and  the  Peace 
Treaty  (Shantung),  741. 

Chisholm  vs.  Georgia,  306-7. 

Cities,  growth  of,  in  1790  and  1800,  342  ; 
in  1830,  421-423;  in  1860,  520;  in 
1860-1920,  578. 

Civil  service,  and  party,  under  Wash 
ington  and  Adams,  359  ;  and  Jefferson, 
359-61;  Crawford's  four-year  bill, 
458  ;  not  abused  by  Adams,  458 ;  and 
Jackson's  spoils  system,  458-9 ;  and 
Lincoln,  530  and  note,  agitation  for 
reform  after  1871,  591;  and  Grant, 
591 ;  and  Hayes,  591  ;  and  campaign 
of  1880,  591-2;  and  law  of  1883, 
593-4;  extension,  672. 

Civil  War,  the,  secession,  and  the  South 
ern  Confederacy,  526-8;  attempt  at 
compromise,  529 ;  and  Lincoln,  529- 
530;  Fort  Sumter,  531-532;  Bull 
Run,  534  ;  Northern  strategy,  534  ff. ; 
the  .  blockade,  535-6 ;  campaigns, 
537-9 :  resources  of  the  sections,  540 ; 
military  prisons,  542 ;  drafts,  542-3 ; 


war  finance,  543-6;  Confederate  cur 
rency,  545 ;  Southern  devotion,  546  ; 
and  slavery,  546-9 ;  and  Europe, 
549-53;  cost,  553;  results,  554-5. 
See  Reconstruction. 

Clark,  Champ,  678-9. 

Clark,  George  Rogers,  233-44,  247. 

Clarke,  James  Freeman,  485. 

Class  strife,  see  Labor. 

Clay,  Henry,  a  "  war  hawk  ",  283-3; 
champion  of  protection,  414;  and 
election  of  1824,  418-9;  duel,  419; 
in  1830,  464;  and  Jackson  and  the 
Bank,  464-5 ;  Preemption  Act,  473-4  ; 
favors  Missouri  Compromise,  482 ; 
defeated  in  1844,  492;  and  Texas, 
491r-2;  the  "  great  pacificator,  "  500; 
and  Omnibus  Bill,  500-2. 

Clayton  Anti-Trust  Act,  680-1. 

Clayton-Bulwer  Treaty,  519 ;  waived  by 
England,  622-3. 

Clemenceau,  722 ;  see  Peace  Congress, 
passim,  731-47. 

Clermont,  Fulton's,  369. 

Cleveland,  Grover,  election,  594 ;  and 
civil  service,  595  ;  and  tariff  reduction, 
595-6  ;  vetoes,  597  note  ;  election  of 
1892,  599;  and  Wilson  tariff,  599; 
and  bond  issues,  607  ;  and  the  "  money 
power,  "  and  radicals,  ib.,  note;  and 
Hawaii,  611 ;  and  Venezuelan  -arbi 
tration,  611-612;  urges  standing, 
treaty  of  arbitration,  612 ;  and  rail 
road  land  grants,  628 ;  and  Pullman 
strike,  649. 

Clinton,  DeWitt,  and  Erie  Canal,  401. 

Clinton,  George,  301. 

Coal,  used  for  power,  421 ;  for  smelting 
iron,  450. 

Cohens  vs.  Virginia,  415. 

Coke,  Sir  Edward,  36. 

Collective  bargaining,  657-8. 

Colombia,  and  the  Panama  Canal,  623 
and  note. 

Colorado,  580. 

Columbus,  7,  8. 

Commerce,  colonial,  161-2  ;  of  the  West 
and  the  Mississippi,  246-7;  in  1800, 
344  ;  Western  in  1800,  367-8  ;  during 
European  wars  near  1800,  381-2.  See 
Big  Business. 

Commerce  Court,  the,  632  and  note. 

"  Committee  on  Public  Information,  " 
in  World  War,  749-750. 

Common  Law,  English,  and  colonial 
charters,  23-24 ;  a  bond  of  union 


INDEX 


19 


among  the  colonies,  140-1  ;  colonists, 
rights  in,  143 ;  formally  adopted  in 
Revolutionary  State  constitutions, 
320 ;  and  the  early  labor  movement, 
435 ;  and  status  of  women,  449. 

Commons,  John  R.,  on  labor  and  public 
domain,  473. 

Communication,  colonial,  3-4 ;  and 
native  trails,  7;  in  the  West,  246- 
7  ;  in  1800,  344,  367-8 ;  and  the 
steamboat,  368,  395-6;  improved 
after  1815,  395-402;  canals,  401-2. 
See  Railroad,  Telegraph,  etc. 

Concord,  battle  of,  207. 

Confederate  States  of  America,  527  ff. 
See  Civil  War. 

Connecticut,  democratic  ideal,  98 ; 
founded,  101-2  ;  Fundamental  Orders, 
102-3 ;  theocracy  in,  103 ;  and  New 
England  Confederation,  104  ;  charter, 
113-4;  and  royal  commission,  114- 
115;  under  Andros,  116-117;  and 
state  constitution,  218 ;  manhood 
franchise,  456  ;  gradual  emancipation 
of  slaves,  479. 

Connecticut  Compromise,  the,  '  281, 
282-3. 

Conservation  of  natural  resources,  673. 

Constellation,  The,  and  the  Vengeance, 
326. 

Constitution  of  the  United  States,  see 
Federal  Constitution. 

Constitutions,  Revolutionary  State,  218- 
23  ;  popular  ratification  only  in  Mass. 
and  New  Hamp.,  218-20;  start  of 
in  Mass.,  219;  checks  on  democracy, 

220,  223  ;    franchise,  20,  and  religion, 

221,  and   executive   veto,    221  ;     defi 
ciency  of  amending  clauses,  221-2. 

Continental  Congress,  First,  202-205; 
Second,  election  of,  208-209  ;  becomes 
a  government,  209  ;  and  Declaration 
of  Independence,  215-217 ;  weak 
ness,  226  ff.,  263-264;  expiring  days, 
300. 

Continental  currency,  226-7. 

Contraband,  in  international  law,  322. 

Convention  (nominating  and  platform) 
system  in  politics,  459. 

Conway  Cabal,  229. 

Cooper,  James  Fenimore,  444. 

Cooperative  societies  (agricultural),  658- 
60. 

Copley,  John  Singleton,  349. 

Corinth,  battle  of,  537. 

Cornell  University,  589. 


Cotton,  and  the  Industrial  Revolution, 
345 ;  and  Civil  War,  which  see. 

Cotton,  John,  decries  democracy,  76,  79, 
80 ;  story  of,  79,  note. 

Cotton  gin,  Whitney's,  345. 

Cowpens,  battle  of,  230. 

Cradock,  Matthew,  71. 

Crashaw's  Daily  Prayer  for  Virginia, 
quoted,  21  and  note. 

Crawford,  W.  H.,  418;  and  tenure-of- 
office  bill,  458. 

Credit  Mobilier,  569-71. 

"  Critical  Period  "  in  American  history, 
263-8 ;  State  sovereignty  principle, 
263  ;  bankruptcy,  264  ;  strife  between 
States,  265 ;  anarchy  within  States, 
265  ff. ;  fiat  money,  266;  Shays' 
Rebellion,  267  ;  evils  due  to  weakness 
of  Central  government,  268.  See 
Articles  of  Confederation. 

Cuba,  Slave  Power's  attempts  to  secure, 
494  ;  revolt  against  Spain,  612  ;  and 
Spanish-American  War,  612-3 ;  settle 
ment  with,  616. 

Cummins-Esch  bill,  635. 

Cutler,  Mannasseh,  253,  256. 

Daguerreotypes,  450. 

Dakotas,  the,  581.  See  North  and  South 
Dakota. 

Dale,  Sir  Thomas,  and  Virginia,  29- 
30. 

Dana,  James  Dwight,  444. 

Dartmouth  College  Case,  292. 

Davis,  Jefferson,  400,  527. 

Deaf,  first  schools  for,  449. 

Debow's  Review,  quoted,  484. 

Debs,  Eugene  V.,  650  and  note,  661. 

Debt,  Imprisonment  for,  349,  438. 

Declaration  of  Independence,  growth  of 
feeling  in  favor  of,  211-212;  in 
structions  for  in  Virginia,  213-214 ; 
penned  by  Jefferson,  215-216 ;  adop 
tion,  216  ;  ratified  by  New  York,  216  ; 
by  one  people  or  thirteen,  260-263. 

Delaware,  107,  117. 

Democratic  party,  origin,  419-20. 

Dennie's  Portfolio,  decries  democracy, 
334-5. 

Dewey,  George,  at  Manila,  614 ;  and 
the  German  fleet,  614-5. 

Dickens,  Charles,  and  America,  424. 

Dickinson,  John,  and  distrust  of  democ 
racy  in  Federal  Convention,  277. 

Diedrich,  Admiral  von,  and  Dewey,  614- 
615. 


INDEX 


Direct  primaries,  665-6. 
Dix,  Dorothy,  449. 
Donelson,  Fort,  537. 

Dorchester,  65  ;  and  growth  of  democ 
racy,  87-8  ;  and  town  meeting,  88  ; 

migration  to  Connecticut,  101-2. 
Dorr,     Thomas     Wilson,     and     Dorr's 

Rebellion,  477-8. 
Douglas,   Stephen  A.,   492,   506-8,   512, 

513,  523-4,  531. 
Drake,  Sir  Francis,  14,  15. 
Drayton,  Michael,  the  Ode  to  Virginia, 

21-2. 
Dred     Scott    decision,     510-511;      and 

Supreme  Court,  511-512. 
Ducking  stool,  the,  145. 
Dudley,  Thomas,  on  the  first  winter  at 

Boston,  69. 

Dunmore's  War,  243-4. 
Dwight,    Theodore,    decries    democracy, 

335. 

Education,  in  the  colonies,  151-6 ;  and 
Northwest  Ordinance  and  Survey 
Ordinance,  255-6 ;  and  grant  for 
State  Universities,  256-7;  in  1800, 
349-50 ;  and  the  early  labor  move 
ment,  432-3,  437,  440-2  ;  revival 
after  1830,  in  Massachusetts,  433 ;  in 
Northwest,  ib. ;  State  systems,  ib. ; 
intellectual  ferment  after  1830,  446- 
448  ;  in  the  South  in  1860,  522  ;  higher 
education  after  1870,  589. 

Edwards,  Jonathan,  151. 

Eight-hour  day,  demand  for,  652 ;  rail 
way  law  of  1916,  656-7. 

Elections,  Presidential,  etc.,  1788,  300- 
1;  1792,  318;  1796,  318;  and  the 
Congressional  caucus,  319 ;  of  1800, 
331-3;  1804,  333-4;  1808,  382; 
1812,  382-3;  of  1816,  418;  of  1820, 
418;  of  1824,  418-9;  1828,  453-6, 
462-3;  of  1832,  465;  1836,  472; 
1840,  475 ;  1844,  491-2 ;  1848,  497-8 ; 
of  1852,  505;  1856,  510;  1860,  523- 
5 ;  '62  and  '64,  548 ;  1868,  561 ; 
1872,  567 ;  1876,  571-2 ;  1880,  591-2 ; 
1884,  594-5;  1888,  595-6;  1892, 
599;  1896,  600,  607-8;  1900,  618-9; 
1904,  672;  1908,  674-5;  1910  (insur 
gent  movement),  676-7  ;  1912,  777-9  ; 
1916,  711-2;  1918  (Congressional), 
735;  1920,  755-7. 

Electoral  college,  290;  and  party 
nominations  ("  letter  carriers"),  319; 
popular  vote  for,  455. 


Electoral  Commission  of  1877,  573. 

Emancipation  Proclamation,  547,  548, 
549  note. 

Embargo  of  1807,  and  failure,  382; 
and  secession  movement  in  New  Eng 
land,  387-8. 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  Concord  in 
scription,  207 ;  place  in  literature, 
444—6 ;  and  democracy,  445—6 ;  and 
new  "  religions,  "  446;  on  social  Uto 
pias,  448 ;  on  abolitionists,  485 ;  on 
Webster's  Seventh  of  March  speech, 
502;  on  Fugitive  Slave  law,  503; 
on  John  Brown's  scaffold,  515. 

Endicott,  John,  62,  63,  65,  94. 

England,  English  roots  of  American 
freedom,  1 ;  English  advantages  in 
colonization,  14-15 ;  rivalry  with 
Spain,  14  ;  and  royal  charters,  16-17  ; 
industrial  conditions  in,  favoring 
colonization,  19,  68 ;  growth  of 
colonial  policy  after  1660,  107-8; 
navigation  acts,  108-12 ;  attempts  at 
closer  control  of  colonies  after  1690, 
132,  137-44 ;  and  writs  of  assistance, 
171-2  ;  and  Grenville's  plan  for  taxing 
America,  172-5  ;  colonial  system  vex 
ing  rather  than  tyrannical,  175  ff. ; 
see  American  Revolution;  and  other 
foes,  229,  236  ;  magnanimity  of  feeling 
in,  regarding  Revolution,  236 ;  rela 
tions  with  America  after  1792,  322-4 ; 
and  Jay  Treaty,  324-6  ;  and  the  slave 
trade,  480-1 ;  and  American  Civil 
War,  549-53 ;  and  Venezuelan  ar 
bitration,  611-2  ;  and  Spanish- 
American  War,  614-5;  and  Triple 
Entente,  688-9  ;  and  Treaty  of  Berlin 
in  1878,  691-2 ;  peacemaker  in  1913, 
695  ;  attempts  for  peace  in  1914,  700 ; 
unprepared  for  war,  701 ;  statement 
of  war  aims,  701-2;  and  the  World 
War,  which  see  ;  and  the  Peace 
Congress,  which  see. 

Entail,  159. 

Esch-Cummins  Act,  635. 

Erie  Canal,  401. 

Evans,  George  H.  and  Frederick  W., 
labor  leaders,  435-6. 

Evans,  Oliver,  368. 

Everett,  Edward,  444. 

Factory      legislation,      654-5.     Factory 

system  (or  capitalist  system),  428. 
Faneuil,  Peter,  133. 
Farm-Loan  Act,  680. 


INDEX 


Farmer     "  Non-Partisan "     movement, 

658-60. 

Federal  Constitution,  the,  see  Critical 
Period  and  Articles  of  Confederation; 
failure  of  attempts  to  amend  Articles, 
269-70  ;  need  of  fundamental  change, 
271 ;  steps  leading  to  Federal  Con 
vention,  272-4  ;  make-up  and  leaders 
of  Convention,  275 ;  distrust  of 
democracy  among,  276-9  and 
passim;  absence  of  democratic  leaders 
from  Convention,  279 ;  conflict  of 
interests,  279  ;  devotion  to  experience, 
280;  Virginia  Plan,  280;  New 
Jersey  Plan,  281 ;  steps  in  making 
Constitution,  281  ;  defections,  281-2 ; 
conflicts  between  large  and  small 
States,  282-3 ;  character  of  our 
government  —  partly  national,  283-4  ; 
"enumerated"  powers,  284;  and 
implied  powers,  285 ;  "  necessary  and 
proper,"  286 ;  apportionment  of 
representation,  286-7 ;  federal  judi 
ciary,  288-9;  electoral  college,  290; 
checks  and  balances,  290-1 ; 
guardianship  of  wealth,  291-2 ;  lack 
of  bill  of  rights,  291  (but  see  amend 
ments)  ;  and  the  franchise,  293-4 ; 
ratification  of,  294-7;  by  States  or 
people,  297-9 ;  broad  and  loose  con 
struction,  312.  See  Amending  clauses, 
and  document  in  Appendix. 
Federal  Convention,  at  Philadelphia,  see 

Federal  Constitution. 

Federal  government,  two  types,  270-1. 
Federal  judiciary,  in  the  Constitution, 
288  ff. ;  power  to  void  laws,  288  and 
note,  292;  life  tenure,  289-90; 
appellate  jurisdiction  and  the  Act  of 
1789,  305-6;  and  Eleventh  amend 
ment,  306-7 ;  Act  of  1801,  332,  333, 
358  ;  "  Midnight  Judges,  "  333  ;  parti 
sanship  after  1800,  361 ;  and  Jefferson, 
361-3  ;  John  Marshall,  362-3,  415-6  ; 
and  the  States,  417 ;  Dred  Scott 
Case  and  Republican  defiance,  511-2  ; 
and  Reconstruction,  563-4 ;  and  in 
come  tax  decisions,  599-600 ;  and 
Philippine  tariff,  618,  note,  619  ;  and 
Interstate  Commerce  Act,  632  ;  pro 
gressive  decisions,  632  ;  and  Clayton 
Act,  680-1. 

Federal  Reserve  Act,  680. 
Federal  Trade  Commission,  680. 
Federalist,  the,  295 ;   quoted,  298-9. 
Federalist  party,  294  and  note ;    victory 


in  1788,  295-7  ;    12-years  rule,  300  ff. ; 
rise  of  true  party  government,  316  ff. ; 
and  Federalist  distrust  of  democracy, 
328-35 ;   and  election  of  1800,  331-4  ; 
services,  336;    almost  extinct  in  1801, 
363 ;    revived   by  embargo   and   war, 
and     secession     tendencies     of,     382, 
387-392  ;    final  fall,  392. 
Fillmore,  Millard,  500. 
Fiske,  "  Jim,  "  603. 
Fitch,  John,  368. 
?iume  incident,  the,  737. 
Florida    (see   Spain),    becomes   English, 
137 ;    returned    to   Spain,    and  acqui 
sition    by   U.   S.,   374-7 ;     statehood, 
496. 

Foch,  Ferdinand,  726,  728. 
Foote's   Resolution,   on   Western   lands, 

466-7. 

1  Forty-niners,"  the,  499. 
'  Fourteen  Points,"  Woodrow  Wilson's, 

723-4  ;  and  the  Peace,  742. 
Fox,  Charles,  182,  233. 
France,     in    America,     4,     9-13 ;      and 
Intercolonial    Wars,     136-7 ;      ceases 
to    be    American    power,     137 ;     and 
American     Revolution,     228-9,     232; 
see  French  Revolution;    relations  with 
America    after    1792,   320-2  ;    "  war  " 
of  1800,  326-7;    and  Louisiana,  370- 
371 ;     and    West    Florida,    375 ;     and 
American    Civil    War,  550,  552;  and 
European  alliances  after  1871,  687-9. 
See  World  War  and  Peace  Congress. 
Franchise,   colonial,   52,   74  ff.   esp.   82, 
120,  121,  123,  125;    and  the  Revolu 
tion,  185,  186;   in  Revolutionary  State 
constitutions,  222;    in  Vermont,  223- 
4;    and  in  Western  settlements,  241, 
245 ;     and   the   Federal   Constitution, 
293;     extension    before    1828,    453-4; 
and  Dorr's  Rebellion,  477-8. 
Frankland,  "  State  "  of,  245-6. 
Franklin,     Benjamin,    and     first     sub 
scription    library,     153 ;      and    U.  of 
Penn.,    152;    and  Albany  Plan,    168; 
theory      of      "  personal      union  "    of 
America  and  England,  180;    approves 
Otis'  plan,  181 ;   and  Stamp  Act,  188  ; 
early    attitude   toward   independence. 
211;    in   France,    228-9;     and   peace 
negotiations,     233-4 ;      and     Federal 
Convention,  278,  279,  283,  293. 
Free  land,  and  democracy,  351,  433-4. 
"  Free  silver,  "  604-8,  618-9. 
Free  Soil  parties,  498-9,  505. 


INDEX 


Free  speech,  denied  by  Mass.  Puritans, 
87 ;  established  in  Zenger  Case,  143- 
4 ;  and  First  amendment,  307-8 ; 
and  the  Slave  Power,  486-8;  and 
New  York  Assembly's  expulsion  of 
Socialists,  661.  See  Religious  Free 
dom. 

Freedman's  Bureau,  556. 

Fremont,  John  C.,  509,  547. 

French  Revolution,  and  America, 
320  ff. 

French  and  Indian  wars,  1690-1763, 
136-7;  and  (causes)  10-13;  and  prep 
aration  for  American  Revolution, 
168-9,  172. 

Fries'  Rebellion,  327-8. 

Frontiers,  in  American  history,  133, 
165-6  ;  influence,  see  West. 

Fugitive  Slave  Law,  of  1793,  313-4 ;  of 
1850,  501,  502,  503-5. 

Fulton,  Robert,  369. 

Fundamental  Orders  of  Connecticut, 
102-3. 

Fur  trade,  and  early  settlement,  55,  57, 
58;  in  1800,  346;  and  War  of  1812, 
383. 

Gadsden,  Christopher,  189,  211. 

Gadsden  Purchase,  494. 

Gallatin,  Albert,  353,  359,  360,  365,  366, 

386,  485. 

Galloway,  Joseph,  204. 
Garfield,  James  A.,  592-3. 
Garrison,  William  Lloyd,  484-6,  487. 
Gaspee,  The,  198. 
General  warrants,  170,  171,  214. 
"  General  welfare  "  clause,  285-6. 
Genet,  "  Citizen  ",  321. 
Geography,  and  American  history,  2-4, 

126-7,  133-6,  338,  339,  341-2. 
George,  Henry,  662,  665. 
George  III,  182-4. 
Georgia,  133,  140,  206,  217,  222,  306-7, 

350,  468-9,  486,  526. 
Germans  in  America,  after  1690,   133; 

save  Missouri  to  Union,  533. 
Germany,   and   Spanish-American   War, 

614-5;      and     China,     620;      opposes 

arbitration    and    disarmament,     624 ; 

see  World  War  and  Peace  Congress . 
Gerry,     Elbridge,     decries     democracy, 

276,  277 ;  refuses  to  sign  Constitution, 

281-2. 

Gettysburg,  534. 
Ghent,  Peace  ot,  386. 
Gilbert,  Sir  Humphrey,  16. 


Gladstone,  W.  E.,  280,  550. 

Glavis,  Louis,  675. 

Gompers,  Samuel,  647. 

Gordon,  G.  W.,  540. 

Gorges,  Robert,  47,  48. 

Gosnold,  Bartholomew,  20. 

Gould,  "  Jay,  "  and  Grant,  603. 

Grangers,  the,  630-631. 

Grant,  U.  S.,  in  Civil  War,  537-542; 
and  generosity  to  conquered,  555 ; 
President,  561,  567-8;  review  of  life, 
568-9  ;  and  Wall  Street,  603. 

Gray,  Asa,  444. 

Great  Western,  the,  and  first  steam 
navigation  of  Atlantic,  450. 

Greeley,  Horace,  476,  528-9,  567. 

"  Greenbacks,  "  543,  603-4;  Greenback 
parties,  592,  604. 

Grenville,  George,  and  American  taxa 
tion,  172-5. 

Guam,  acquired,  615. 

Hadley,  Arthur,  on  property  rights  and 
the  Constitution,  292,  625. 

Hague  Congresses,  624. 

Haig,  Sir  Douglas,  726. 

Haiti,  622. 

Hakluyt,  Richard,  14,  18. 

Hamilton,  Alexander,  on  New  York's 
"  accession  "  to  the  Union,  261 ;  on 
need  of  a  federal  state,  271 ;  and  call 
for  Convention,  272,  273:  distrust 
of  democracy,  278-9,  335 ;  weakened 
at  Philadelphia  by  absence  of  col 
leagues,  282  and  note ;  wished  to 
limit  franchise,  293 ;  and  the 
Federalist,  295 ;  and  ratification  of 
Constitution.  297 ;  characterized  by 
Maclay,  302,  note;  Secretary,  304; 
on  power  of  Federal  judiciary  and  the 
States,  307;  financial  policy,  308- 
311 ;  consolidating  influence  of  same, 
310-311;  and  the  new  Federalist 
party,  317 ;  services,  336 ;  and  plots 
for  New  England  secession,  387 ;  and 
death,  387 ;  and  protective  tariffs, 
412. 

Hancock,  John,  295. 

Hancock,  W.  S.,  540. 

Hanna,  Mark,  609. 

Harding,  Warren  G.,  756. 

Harlan  (Justice),  on  Income  Tax  deci 
sion,  600 ;  on  Interstate  Commerce 
decisions,  632. 

Harrison,  Benjamin,  597. 

Harrison,  William  Henry,  395,  475. 


INDEX 


Hartford  Convention,  389-91. 
Harvard,  152,  155;    in  1800,  349;    and 

Unitarianism,  446. 

Harvey,  Sir  John,  and  Virginia,  39,  40. 
Hawaii,  518,  610,  611,  616. 
Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  444.     See  Brook 

Farm. 

Hay,  John,  620,  624. 
Hayes,  R.  R.,  572,  591. 
Hayne,  R.  Y.,  and  debate  with  Webster, 

466-7. 
Henry,     Patrick,     Resolutions,     188-9; 

an   "  American  "    263 ;     and    Federal 

Convention,  274  ;    opposes  ratification 

of  Constitution,  298. 
Hepburn  Act,  632-4. 
Higginson,  Francis,  63,  65,  90. 
Higginson,    Thomas    Wentworth,    485, 

505. 

High  Cost  of  Living,  rise  after  1890,  602. 
Holmes,  Oliver  W.,  444. 
Holmes  vs.  Walton,  289. 
Holy  Alliance,  407-8. 
Homestead  policy,  and  Andrew  Johnson, 

514  ;    and  Freesoilers,  514  ;     Buchan 
an's  veto,  ib.,  law  of  1862,  514,  515 ; 

and  Reconstruction,  555. 
Hooker,  "  Fighting  Joe,  "  540. 
Hooker,  Thomas,  90,  101-2,  104. 
Hoover,  Herbert  C.,  750. 
Hope  Factory,  and  the  long  day,  430- 

431. 
Hopkins,     Stephen,     and     the     Gaspee 

incident,  198. 
Horseshoe  Bend,  396. 
Houston,  "  Sam  ",  490,  597,  note. 
Howe,  Julia  Ward,  669. 
Howe  Sewing  Machine,  450. 
Howells,  William  Dean,  quoted,  447. 
Hughes,  Charles  Evans,  711-2. 
Huguenots,  excluded  from  New  France, 

13  ;   in  English  colonies,  133. 
Hutchinson,  Anne,  94-6. 
Hutchinson,  Thomas,  191,  196. 

Idaho,  581. 

Illinois,  County  of,  250. 

Illinois,  402,  471-81. 

Immigration,  after  1815,  393-4;    about 

1840,  496  ;  from  1860  to  1920,  578-80. 
"  Imperialism,  "     after    Spanish     War, 

617-9. 
Implied   powers,   285-6;    and   National 

Bank,  312  ;    and  Supreme  Court,  415. 
Impressments,  and  War  of  1812,  322-3, 

383-4. 


Income  tax,  of  1862,  543 ;   of  1893,  599  ; 

and    Supreme    Court,     599-600;      of 

1913,  680;   after  World  War,  751,  754. 
Indentured  servants,  19.     See  Servants. 
Independent  Treasury,  the,  472. 
Indiana,  Territory  of,  258;    State,  402; 

education,  443  ;    "  Black  laws,"  481. 
Indians,  5-7. 

Indian  Territory,  469 ;  becomes  Okla 
homa,  582. 

Industrial  Revolution,  425-8. 
Industrial     Workers     of     the      World 

(I.W.W.),  661. 

Initiative  (Popular),  219-20,  666-7. 
Injunction,     "  Government      by,"     650, 

651,  681-2. 
Intercolonial     wars,     see     French     and 

Indian. 
Internal   improvements,   365-6;    396-8, 

399. 
Interstate     Commerce     Act,     632.     See 

Hepburn  Act,  Clayton  Act. 
Inventions,  72,  352,  449-50,  517-8.  See 

Railroad,  Steamboat,  etc. 
Iowa,  496. 
Irish,  immigration  of,  after  the  "  famine, " 

394  note,  496.     See  Scotch-Irish. 
Iron  Works,  colonial,  72,  138;    in  1800, 

345,  450 ;   in  New  South,  582. 
Iroquois,  the,  6,  10-11. 
Irving,  Washington,  444. 
Island  No.  10,  capture,  537. 

Jackson,  Andrew,  at  New  Orleans,  385 ; 
Horse  Shoe  Bend,  395;  election  of 
1824,  418-9;  victory  of  1828  and 
significance,  454  ff. ;  personality, 
456-7 ;  and  prerogative,  457-8 ;  and 
"  spoils,  "  458-9 ;  "  reign  "  of,  462  ff.  ; 
and  the  Bank,  464-5,  469-470; 
reelection,  465 ;  and  nullification, 
465-9 ;  and  Georgia's  nullification, 
468-9;  specie  circular,  471-2;  and 
Van  Buren,  472. 

Jackson,  "  Stonewall  '"',  540-41. 

Jacksonian  Democracy,  and  Jeffersonian, 
454-5. 

Jamaica,  107,  111,  139. 

Jamestown,  24-8. 

Japan,  318.  See  World  War,  Shantung, 
Peace  Congress. 

Jay,  John,  204,  211,  233-4,  295;  and 
Jay  Treaty,  324-6. 

Jefferson,  Thomas,  hesitates  on  inde 
pendence  in  1775,  211;  pens  Decla 
ration,  215-6 ;  on  ease  of  transition 


INDEX 


to  independent  states,  218  ;  on  need  of 
popular  ratification  of  constitutions, 
218 ;  encourages  Clark's  conquest  of 
Northwest,  233;  and  Territorial 
Ordinance  of  1784  (anti-slavery), 
252 ;  characterized  by  Maclay,  302 
note ;  on  defeat  of  proposal  for  pres 
idential  titles,  303;  Secretary,  304; 
and  Hamilton's  finance,  310-311; 
and  new  Republican  party,  317 ; 
vice  president,  318 ;  alarm  at  alien- 
sedition  acts,  329 ;  and  Kentucky 
Resolutions,  329-30;  election  of 
1800,  331-3;  and  a  better  plow, 
346;  the  man,  353-4;  career  to 
1800,  354-6;  principles,  356;  fore 
shadows  Monroe  Doctrine  and  world 
peace,  356-7  ;  simplicity,  357-8 ;  and 
economy,  359 ;  and  civil  service,  359- 
61 ;  and  judiciary,  360-3 ;  reelec 
tion,  363;  declines  3d  term,  363-4; 
centralizing  influences  in  2nd  term, 
364-6;  Louisiana  Purchase,  370-4; 
explorations,  378-9.  and  foreign 
relations,  380-2;  secures  Madison's 
election,  382;  and  Monroe  Doctrine, 
409,  410 ;  favored  Missouri  Com 
promise,  482. 

Jeffersonian  Democracy,  454-5. 

Johns  Hopkins  University,  589. 

Johnson,  Andrew,  and  early  labor  move 
ment,  437  ;  first  homestead  bill,  514 ; 
and  career  to  1861,  537;  president, 
557-8;  and  Reconstruction,  558; 
and  Congress,  558-61. 

Johnson,  Hiram,  640,  665. 

Johnston,  Albert  Sidney,  540. 

Johnston,  J.  E.,  540. 

Judiciary  Act  of  1789  (appellate  juris 
diction),  305-6. 

Judiciary,  see  Federal  Judiciary. 

Kalm,  Peter,  169. 

Kanawha,  battle  of  the  Great,  243-4. 

Kansas,      see     Kansas-Nebraska     Bill; 

"bleeding     Kansas",     508-9,      512; 

struggle  for  statehood,  513 ;  admission, 

580. 

Kansas-Nebraska  Bill,  506-8. 
Kaskaslda,  233,  236. 
Kentucky,     settlement,     233,     238     ff . ; 

Boone,  241-2,  244;    Dunmore's  War, 

243 ;   basis  for  conquest  of  Northwest, 

244;     separatist    movements,    246-7; 

admitted,  248,  314;    and  democracy, 

314 ;   rapid  growth,  367. 


Kentucky  Resolutions,  of  1798-9,  329- 

30. 

Kerensky,  718.  744. 
Key,  Francis  Scott,  386. 
King  Philip's  War,  115. 
King's  College  (Columbia),  152. 
King's  Mountain,  battle  of,  230. 
Knights  of  Labor,  647. 
Know-Nothing  parry,  506. 
Ku-Klux-KLan,  562-3. 

Labor,  in  the  American  Revolution, 
186,  206-7;  and  demand  for  popular 
ratification  of  constitution  in  New 
York,  218  ;  beginnings  of  organization 
in  America,  425-8 ;  new  conditions, 
428;  class  defined,  429;  the  long 
day,  430-1 ;  .lack  of  schooling,  431-2; 
lack  of  land,  433-4 ;  early  unions 
before  1800,  434-5;  early  strikes, 
prosecuted  for  conspiracy,  435 ;  hos 
tile  courts,  435 ;  and  the  press,  435-6 : 
first  labor  papers,  435-6 ;  from  1825  to 
1837,  436  ff . ;  strikes  for  ten-hour  day, 
436,  439-440;  "man  above  the 
dollar,"  439;  and  schools,  440-2; 
and  closed  shop,  439 ;  political  action, 
437-8;  and  public  domain,  473, 
organizations  destroyed  by  panic  of 
'37,  439;  organization  after  1865, 
646  ff. ;  Knights  of  Labor,  647 ;  A.  F. 
of  L.,  646 ;  and  railway  strikes  of  '77, 
'94,  and  1902,  648-50;  and  "  govern 
ment  by  injunction,  "  650-1  ;  and 
use  of  violence,  561-2 ;  and  eight- 
hour  day,  652-3 ;  and  child  labor, 
653-4  ;  and  living  wage,  653  ;  factory 
acts,  654 ;  compensation  acts,  655 ; 
closed  shop,  667-8 ;  democratization 
of  industry,  658.  See  Socialism. 

Lafayette,  in  American  Revolution,  228. 

La  Foflette,  Robert  M.,  664,  665-6,  677. 

Land  policy,  see  Public  Domain. 

Land  Survey  Ordinance,  of  1785,  255,- 
256. 

League  of  Nations,  713-4;  and  the 
Peace  Congress,  736 ;  the  Covenant, 
738-9 ;  and  the  United  States,  756. 

Lee,  -Richard  Henry,  190-1, '263,  270. 

Lee,  Robert  E.,  539  and  note,  540. 

Legal  Tender  Acts,  543;  and  Supreme 
Court  decisions,  564. 

Lenin,  Nikolai,  718,  743-7. 

Lewis  and  Clark's  expedition,  378-9. 

Lexington,  battle  of,  165,  167,  207,  208. 

Liberia,  480. 


INDEX 


Liberty  party  (1844),  492. 

Lichnowsky,  695,  698  and  note,  700. 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  early  life,  400;  and 
the  abolitionists,  485-6 ;  condemns 
Supreme  Court  for  Dred  Scott  deci 
sion,  511 ;  debates  with  Douglas,  512  ; 
on  slavery,  512;  election  of  1860, 
523-5 ;  willing  to  accept  amendment 
to  forbid  interference  with  slavery  in 
States,  529;  1st  inaugural,  529-30; 
the  man,  530  ;  and  civil  service,  530 ; 
and  slavery  (13th  amendment),  548- 
9 ;  assassination,  554 ;  and  Recon 
struction,  556-7 ;  and  proposal  for 
Negro  franchise,  559. 

Literature,  outburst  in  after  1830,  444- 
5  ;  and  Unitarianism,  445-6. 

Lloyd-George,  723.  See  World  War. 
Peace  Congress. 

Local  self-government,  lacking  in  New 
France,  12—13 ;  growth  in  New 
England,  see  Town  meeting;  and  Vir 
ginia,  121,  125;  Virginian  and  New 
England  types,  126-7. 

Loco  Foco  party,  438. 

Lodge,  Henry  Cabot,  594. 

London  Company,  for  Virginia,  30-36 ; 
overthrow,  37;  use  of  ballot,  36,  82, 
note;  and  the  Pilgrims,  51,  52. 

Long,  Crawford  W.,  and  anesthetics,  450. 

Long  Island,  battle  of,  217. 

Longfellow,  Henry  W.,  444. 

Longstreet,  James,  540. 

Lorimer,  and  the  Senate,  669. 

Lotteries,  opposed  by  early  labor 
•  organizations,  439,  note. 

Louisiana  Purchase,  370  ff. ;  and  con 
stitutional  problems,  372-4 ;  and 
West  Florida  and  Texas,  which  see. 

Louisiana,  Spanish  territory,  137;  ac 
quired  by  U.  S.,  370  ff. ;  District  of, 
373 ;  attached  to  Indiana  Territory, 
which  see ;  State  of,  373  note. 

Lovejoy,  Elijah,  martyr,  487. 

Lowell,  James  Russell,  on  Pilgrims,  47 ; 
on  Quaker  persecutions,  112;  on 
Puritan  gloom,  149  ;  on  Puritan  schools, 
154-5  ;  inscription  over  British  dead 
at  Concord,  207  ;  on  territorial  growth, 
338-9;  on  solidarity  of  labor,  425; 
place  in  literature,  444  ;  and  slavery, 
485 ;  on  Fugitive  Slave  Law,  501 ; 
on  Dred  Scott  Case,  511 ;  early  atti 
tude  toward  secession,  529 ;  after 
Sumter,  531-2;  on  Grant,  569; 
on  corruption  in  politics,  589. 


Lowell  factory  life,  in  1830,  431. 

Lower  South,  the,  399-400. 

Loyalists,  in  American  Revolution,  211, 

224,  231-3,  234,  235. 
Lundy,  Benjamin,  484. 
Lundy's  Lane,  384. 
Lusitania,  The,  710-1. 
Lyon,  Matthew,  339. 

McAdoo,  and  the  Coal  Trust,  752 ;  and 
the  San  Francisco  Convention,  756. 

McCulloch  vs.  Maryland,  415-6. 

McCormick  reaper,  450,  517,  518. 

McKinley,  William,  596,  607-9,  612,  613, 
619,  620. 

Maclay,  William,  Journal,  302;  note, 
303,  304. 

Madison,  James,  and  call  for  Con 
vention,  273  ;  and  Journal,  274  ;  and 
Virginia  Plan,  280 ;  opposes  Conn. 
Compromise,  283  ;  and  the  franchise, 
293  ;  and  the  Federalist,  595  ;  on  "  We 
the  People ",  298-9 ;  characterized 
by  Maclay,  302,  note ;  and  Virginia 
Resolutions  (1798),  329-30;  Presi 
dent,  382-3 ;  reelection,  383 ;  and 
War  of  1812,  383  ff. ;  veto  of  internal 
improvements,  397-8 ;  opposes  man 
hood  franchise,  453. 

Madison's  Journal  of  the  Federal  Con 
vention,  274. 

Maine,  98;  joined  to  Mass.,  115;  and 
NE  boundary  and  Jay  Treaty,  325; 
State  of,  402,  419;  1st  prohibition 
law,  449 ;  and  Webster-Ashburton 
Treaty,  477. 

Maine,  The,  and  Spanish-American  War, 
613. 

Maize,  6-7,  56. 

Manila,  battle  of,  614. 

Mann,  Horace,  434,  443. 

Manufactures,  colonial,  72,  159,  160, 
161 ;  in  1800,  344-5 ;  growth  of  tex 
tile  in  New  England  (1807-1815),  411 ; 
and  early  demand  for  protection  (see 
Tariffs)  ;  in  1830,  421  ;  in  New  South, 
582 ;  after  high  tariffs  of  '88  and  '92, 
601-2. 

Marblehead,  67. 

Marbury  vs.  Madison,  362-3. 

Marietta,  257. 

Marne,  battle  of,  703. 

Marshall,  John,  on  "  general  welfare  " 
clause,  286;  on  Federal  courts  and 
the  States,  307;  chief  justice,  362- 
3;  Marbury  vs.  Madison,  362-3; 


INDEX 


McCulloch  vs.  Maryland,  and  Cohens 
vs.  Virginia,  415. 

Marston's  Eastward  Hoe,  20-21. 

Martin,  Luther,  and  "  Federalist,  "  294 
and  note. 

Maryland,  colonial,  41-46;  and  "  Terri 
tories,  "  250-1 ;  manhood  franchise, 
453. 

Mason,  George,  and  Virginia's  bill  of 
rights,  214 ;  and  Federal  Convention, 
275  ff . ;  lonely  champion  of  democ 
racy,  279 ;  declines  to  sign,  281-2 ; 
and  opposes  ratification,  282,  295 ; 
and  Conn.  Compromise,  283 ;  criti 
cises  "necessary  and  proper,"  286; 
advocates  fair  treatment  of  West, 
287  ;  opposes  slave  trade,  287-8 ;  ad 
vocates  democratic  franchise,  293. 

Mason  and  Dixon's  Line,  129. 

Mason  and  Slidell,  551. 

Massachusetts,  colonial,  preliminaries, 
62,  63,  65  ;  the  "  great  migration,  " 
65-7 ;  significance  in  history,  67 ; 
motives,  67-9 ;  early  hardships,  69- 
70;  early  industries,  71-3;  danger 
of  interference  from  England,  73-4 ; 
aristocracy  and  democracy,  74  ff . ; 
Watertown  Protest,  77 ;  represent 
ative  government,  78-80;  social 
classes,  81  ;  franchise,  82 ;  evolution 
of  ballot,  82-4  ;  growth  of  jury  system, 
84-5 ;  written  laws,  85-6 ;  evolution 
of  bicameral  legislature,  86-8,  97 ; 
and  free  speech,  87 ;  town-meeting 
government,  88-90;  ideal,  aristocratic 
theocracy,  90-1 ;  tendencies  to 
church  independency,  90-91 ;  church 
and  state,  91 ;  denial  of  religious 
freedom,  92,  97;  and  New  England 
Confederation,  104-106;  under  the 
second  Stuarts,  107  ff . ;  and  Navi 
gation  Acts,  110;  struggle  to  save 
self-government,  112-117;  charter 
of  1691,  118;  and  governor's  salary, 
142;  witchcraft  delusion,  149-150; 
calls  Stamp-Act  Congress,  188;  orig 
inates  town  committees  of  corre 
spondence,  197 ;  and  the  Revolution, 
200-1 ;  bill  of  rights  and  slavery, 
215  note;  initiative  and  referendum 
(and  Constitutional  convention)  in, 
218-9,  220-221  ;  executive  veto,  221 ; 
state  and  church  under  state  con 
stitution,  221 ;  aristocracy  intrenched 
in  senate,  222-3;  territorial  claims 
and  cessions,  250,  252 ;  Shays'  Re 


bellion,  266,  267;  nullification  and 
secession  projects,  387-392;  and 
educational  revival  after  1830;  443; 
extension  of  franchise  after  1821,  453; 
abolition  and  slavery,  479. 

Maury,  Matthew  Fontaine,  444. 

May,  Samuel  J.,  485,  505. 

Mayflower,  the,  52-53. 

Mayflower  Compact,  the,  53-4. 

Mechanics'  Free  Press,  435-6;  quoted 
passim. 

Mecklenburg  "  Declaration,"  207. 

Memphis,  battle  of,  537. 

Mennonites,  in  early  Pennsylvania,  130 ; 
and  slavery,  ib. 

Merrimac,  The,  535-6. 

Methodist  church,  growth  of,  446. 

Mexican  War,  493-4. 

Mexico,  independent,  490;  and  Texas, 
which  see;  and  war  with  U.  S., 
493-4;  and  Gadsden  Purchase,  494; 
Woodrow  Wilson  and,  682-3. 

Michigan,  422. 

Michigan  University,  589. 

"  Midnight  Judges,  "  333. 

Militarism,  in  Europe,  leading  to  World 
War,  689,  695. 

Mills,  Roger  Q.,  595. 

Minnesota,  513. 

Minimum  wage,  653. 

Missouri,  see  Missouri  Compromise; 
saved  to  Union  in  1861,  533. 

Missouri  Compromise,  417-8;  a  sec 
tional  measure,  482 ;  and  Kansas- 
Nebraska  Bill,  506-8;  and  Dred 
Scott,  511. 

Mississippi,  Territory,  248 ;   State,  402. 

Mississippi  River,  navigation  of,  in  early 
national  period,  246;  and  Civil  War, 
536-7. 

Mitchell,  John,  and  coal  strike,  649-50. 

Monitor  and  Merrimac,  535. 

Monmouth,  battle  of,  230. 

Monroe,  James,  opposes  Federal  Con 
vention,  274 ;  vetoes  internal  improve 
ments,  399 ;  and  Monroe  Doctrine, 
which  see. 

Monroe  Doctrine,  407-10;  and  Napo 
leon  III  in  Mexico,  552,  565;  and 
Venezuelan  arbitration,  611-2;  and 
Roosevelt's  Venezuelan  arbitration, 
622. 

Montana,  581. 

Moore,  Ely,  437. 

Morgan,  J.  Pierpont,  650. 

Mormons,  the,  448-9. 


INDEX 


Merrill  Bill  (agricultural  education),  545. 
Morris,  Gouverneur,  144,  277,  281,  283, 

286,  293,  335-6,  399. 
Mugwumps,  594. 
Municipal  corruption,  before  1860,  520 ; 

and  public-service  corporations,  642—4. 
Munn  vs.  Illinois   (the  Granger  Case), 

631. 

Napoleon  I,  see  Louisiana  Purchase,  and 
War  of  1812. 

Napoleon  III,  and  American  Civil  War, 
552;  and  Monroe  Doctrine,  565. 

"  Nat  Turner's  Rising,  "  486. 

National  Bank,  312  ;  and  implied  powers, 
312;  the  second  Bank,  398;  and 
Bonus  Bill  veto,  398 ;  and  Jackson, 
464-5,  468-70. 

National  Banking  Acts,  of  1863  and  1864, 
544. 

National  debt,  as  fixed  by  Hamilton's 
Plan,  309-310;  and  Jefferson,  358-9; 
in  1815,  384 ;  paid  in  1835,  471 ;  in 
1865,  553 ;  reduction  by  1890,  555 ; 
and  World  War,  748. 

National  Road,  365-6,  396-7. 

Navigation  Acts,  English,  and  European 
mercantilism,  108  ff. ;  England's  policy 
relatively  enlightened,  108  ff.  ;  Spain's, 
108-9 ;  Act  of  1660,  110 ;  of  1663,  111 ; 
restricting  manufactures  after  1690, 
188-9  ;  Sugar  Act  of  1733,  139. 

Nebraska,  580. 

Negro,  the,  in  Reconstruction,  556  ff. ; 
franchise  refused  long  in  Northern 
States,  559  and  note ;  Constitutional 
amendments  and,  560-1  ;  and  South 
ern  agriculture,  582. 

Nevada,  580. 

New  England  Council  (or  Plymouth 
Council),  47-48,  60,  62,  73. 

New  England  Confederation,  104-6. 

New  England  Primer,  154,  155. 

New  Hampshire,  98,  115,  139,  217-8, 
220,  222,  283,  300,  479. 

New  Harmony,  448. 

New  Haven,  98,  114. 

New  Jersey,  107,  117,  140,  275,  479,  480, 
639. 

New  Mexico,  493-4,  582. 

New  Orleans.  372.  373,  537. 

New  Orleans,  battle  of,  385. 

New  South,  the,  582. 

New  York,  107,  117;  as  New  Nether 
lands,  127  ;  petition  of  English  settlers 
for  self-government,  127,  128 ;  and 


English  rule,  128;  royal  province, 
139;  and  Revolution,  206,  207,  216, 
218,  220,  221,  261 ;  loses  vote  in  1788, 
301  ;  and  extension  of  franchise,  453  ; 
and  "spoils,"  459  note;  gradual 
emancipation  in,  479 ;  Australian 
ballot,  665 ;  expulsion  of  Socialists 
from  Assembly,  661. 

New  York  City,  growth  due  to  Erie 
Canal,  401. 

Newburg  Address,  Washington's,  232. 

Newspapers,  colonial,  153 ;  first  penny 
daily,  444. 

Newtown,  65,  101,  102. 

Nippold,  Ottfried,  698. 

Nomination,  Presidential,  by  congres 
sional  caucus,  318-9 ;  by  State 
legislatures,  363,  418;  decline  of 
caucus,  419,  459 ;  and  party  con 
ventions,  459-60 ;  direct  primaries, 
665-6,  677. 

"  Non-Partisan  League,  "  in  North 
Dakota,  658-60. 

Normal  School,  the  first  in  America, 
443. 

"  North,  "  the,  in  1830,  421 ;  in  1860, 
520-1. 

North,  Lord,  and  the  American  Revolu 
tion,  193  ff. ;  especially,  199,  200,  225, 
233. 

North  Carolina,  see  Carolinas ;  and  the 
Western  counties  (Regulators),  184-5; 
and  Mecklenburg  "  Declaration,  " 
207 ;  and  Revolutionary  State  fran 
chise,  222 ;  and  early  Tennessee 
settlement,  238,  241,  245,  246;  cedes 
Tennessee,  251 ;  and  Federal  Con 
stitution,  296,  314.  See  Civil  War. 

North  Dakota,  581.  See  Dakotas  and 
Non-Partisan  League. 

Northern  Securities  Case,  634. 

Northwest  Ordinance,  the,  253-255; 
evasion  of  anti-slavery  provisions, 
480-481. 

Northwest  Posts,  and  Revolutionary 
War,  234,  235;  and  Jay  Treaty,  258; 
and  Indian  troubles,  258,  note. 

"  No  taxation  without  representation,  " 
first  affirmed  in  America  in  Virginia, 
38,  40. 

Nullification,  by  colonial  Massachusetts 
in  New  England  Confederation,  105-6  ; 
by  Georgia  (Chisholm  case),  307  ;  and 
Kentucky  Resolutions,  329-30:  dis 
cussion  of,  330 ;  in  New  England 
(1804-1815),  386-92;  and  Calhoun's 


INDEX 


Exposition,  etc.,  465-469  ;  and  Georgia 
in  1832,  468-469.  See  Personal  Lib 
erty  laics . 

Oberlin,  admission  of  women,  444. 

Ohio,  see  Northwest  Ordinance  and  Ohio 
Company;  State,  258,  314;  and 
internal  improvements,  365 ;  growth, 
367. 

Ohio  Company,  253,  257-8. 

Oklahoma,  581-2,  664. 

Omnibus  BUI,  of  1850,  500-2. 

Oregon,  U.  S.  claims  to,  378,  406 ;  and 
European  claims,  406;  "joint  occu 
pation,  "  406-7 ;  and  Monroe  Doc 
trine,  407-8 ;  northern  boundary 
denned,  409,  491  ;  and  Texas  question, 
491 ;  in  campaign  of  1844,  491-2 ; 
compromise  with  England  regarding, 
492-3 ;  Statehood,  513 ;  progressive 
politics  in,  653,  664,  667,  668,  669. 

Ostend  Manifesto,  494. 

Otis,  James,  170-1,  179,  181,  188. 

Owen,  Robert,  448. 

Paine,  Thomas,  212;  and  Common 
Sense,  212  ;  and  the  Crisis,  217 ;  and 
plan  for  "  territories,"  250-1  ;  and  a 
continental  union,  260. 

Pan-American  Congress  of  1889,  610. 

Panama  Canal,  519,  622-623. 

"  Panics  "  industrial,  413,  469-70, 
470-1,  517,  606-7,  627-8,  674. 

Parker,  Alton  B.,  672,  677-8. 

Parker,  Theodore,  485. 

Party  government,  not  foreseen  by  the 
"Fathers,"  316,  319-20;  nature  of, 
319-20. 

Payne-Aldrich  Tariff,  675-6. 

Peace  Congress  of  1919,  731-43. 

Penn,  William,  128,  130,  168. 

Pennsylvania,  107,  128-31,  173,  185, 
222,  366,  401-2,  479. 

Pensions,  Civil  War,  598-9. 

Perry's  victory  on  Lake  Erie,  384-5. 

Pershing,  John  J.,  721. 

Personal  Liberty  laws,  504-5. 

Petersburg,  siege  of,  540. 

Petition,  right  of,  and  Puritan  Massa 
chusetts,  76-77,  95,  96  ;  and  the  Slave 
Power,  488-9.  See  Free  Speech. 

Philippines,  and  Spanish  War,  614-5; 
acquired,  615-6;  and  "  imperialism,  " 
618-9  ;  growth  of  self-government  in, 
619  ;  tariffs,  618,  note,  619. 

Phillips,  Wendell,  484,  529. 


Pickering,  Thomas,  386,  390. 

Pierce,  Franklin,  505,  506-8. 

Pierce,  William,  notes  on  Federal 
Convention,  275-6,  278. 

Pilgrim  Fathers,  see  Separatists;  in 
Holland,  49-50  ;  removal  to  America, 
50-53  ;  see  Plymouth. 

Pike's  Expedition  (Zebulon  Pike),  405. 

Pinchot,  Gifford,  675. 

Pinckney  Treaty,  with  Spain,  327. 

Pine  Tree  Shillings,  113. 

Pitt,  William  (Lord  Chatham),  169,  170, 
181,  183,  192. 

Pitt,  William  (the  younger),  183,  380. 

Pittsburg,  and  iron  industry,  450  and 
note. 

Pittsburg  Landing,  battle  of,  537. 

Plymouth,  see  Pilgrims;  early  history, 
53-60;  annexed  to  Mass.,  60,  115; 
place  in  history,  61. 

Plymouth  Company,  of  1606,  23,  24. 
See  New  England  Council. 

Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  444. 

Political  parties,  see  Party  Government. 

Polk,  James  K.,  492,  493,  494. 

"  Pony  Express,"  the,  519. 

Pontiac's  War,  173. 

Population,  in  1660,  107  ;  in  1690,  133  ff . ; 
in  1775,  156;  in  1800,  342-344;  in 
1810,  367  ;  in  1850,  496 ;  in  1860,  520 ; 
in  1880-1920,  578-9. 

Populist  party,  606. 

Port  Hudson,  Capture,  537. 

Porto  Rico,  612,  615. 

Potash,  industry,  73,  401. 

Presidential  elections,  see  Elections. 

Presidential  patronage,  460-1. 

Preston,  Levi,  176. 

Primaries,  see  Direct. 

Princeton  University,  152. 

Profiteering,  orgy  of,  after  World  War, 
752-4. 

Progressive  movement,  in  politics,  the, 
663  ff. ;  and  the  States,  663-4; 
Australian  ballot,  665;  direct  pri 
maries,  665-6  ;  direct  legislation  and 
recall,  666-8;  direct  election  of 
Senate,  669;  woman  suffrage,  669- 
71 ;  and  prohibition,  671-2 ;  and 
Roosevelt,  672-4;  and  Taft,  675-7; 
and  Wilson,  677-81 ;  defeat  in  1920, 
757. 

Progressive  party,  the,  678. 

Prohibitionist  party,  592,  671-2. 

Protective  tariffs,  see  Tariffs. 

Public     Domain,     acquired     by     State 


INDEX 


cessions,  249-51  (for  extension,  see 
Territorial  growth)  ;  Survey  Ordinance 
(and  school  grants) ,  255-66 ;  credit 
sales,  367  ;  new  system  of  1820,  395  ; 
demand  of  West  and  of  labor  for 
freer  policy,  462  (and  see  Labor)  ; 
Foote's  Resolution,  466-73;  and  Pre 
emption  law.  472-4 ;  and  "  Settlers' 
Associations,"  474-5;  grants  to 
States,  473-4  ;  Homestead  legislation, 
514;  railway  grants,  569-71,  628, 
note  ;  looting  of,  588-9  ;  and  Ballinger 
incident,  675. 

Public  Service  corporations,  641 ;  and 
political  corruption,  642-4. 

Pure  Food  law,  673. 

Puritanism,  49  ;  factor  in  colonization, 
50  ff. ;  decay  after  1690,  147-9; 
and  witchcraft  delusion,  149-50 ; 
and  rise  of  other  religious  movements, 
150,  151. 

Putnam,  Israel,  201. 

Quakers,  100,  112.     See  Pennsylvania. 
Quay,  Matthew,  596-7,  599,  note. 
Quebec  Act,  201,  237,  243. 
Quincy,  Josiah,  388-9. 

Railway,  the,  451-2;  growth  to  1860, 
516;  and  land  grants,  569-71,  628, 
note ;  see  Union  Pacific ;  extension 
from  1865  to  1870,  582  ;  to  1910,  583  ; 
transformation  of  old  roads,  583—4 ; 
consolidation,  584-585 ;  watered 
stock,  627-9 ;  further  consolidation, 
629-630;  rates,  629,  note;  dis 
criminations,  630 ;  Granger  legis 
lation,  630-631  ;  Interstate  Com 
merce  Act,  631-2;  Hepburn  Act, 
632—4  ;  failure  of  attempts  to  regulate, 
634-5;  and  the  war,  635.  See 
Cummins- Esch  Act. 

Raleigh,  Sir  Walter,  14,  16-7. 

Ramsey,  David,  quoted,  186. 

Randolph,  Edmund,  215,  note,  275, 
180,  282,  287,  283,  305,  316. 

Randolph,  John,  412,  414,  419,  453. 

Recall,  the,  667-8. 

Reconstruction  (after  Civil  War),  555- 
566. 

Reed,  Walter,  and  the  Yellow  Fever,  617. 

Reeder,  Andrew  H.,  509. 

Referendum,  originates  in  demands  for 
popular  ratification  of  State  con 
stitutions  in  New  England  in  1776, 
218-220;  development,  666-7. 


"  Regulators,  "  the,  in  North  Carolina, 
184-5. 

Religious  freedom,  and  Md.,  45-6; 
and  the  Puritans,  91  ff. ;  ideal  stated 
by  Lords  Brooke  and  Saltonstall, 
96-7;  and  Rh.  I.,  98-101;  and 
Revolutionary  State  Constitutions, 
221  ;  in  early  "  West,  "  241  ;  and 
Northwest  Ordinance,  255.  See  Vir 
ginia  Bill  of  Rights,  First  Amendment 
to  Federal  Constitution,  and  Free 
Speech. 

Republican  party  (of  Jefferson),  or 
ganized,  317-8 ;  and  French  Revo 
lution,  321  ;  and  victory  in  1800, 
331  ff . ;  divides  into  National  Repub 
licans  (Whigs)  and  Democrats,  which 
see. 

Republkan  party,  coalescence  of  anti- 
Nebraska  men,  509  ;  first  Convention, 
509-10;  and  Dred  Scott  decision, 
511-2.  See  Elections. 

Revere,  Paul,  195,  350. 

Rhode  Island,  98 ;  early  history  and 
religious  freedom,  98-101  ;  charter 
of  1663,  100,  113-4;  under  Andros, 
116-7;  recovers  charter,  117;  dis 
franchises  Catholics,  131  ;  and  Federal 
Constitution,  283,  296,  314;  and 
Dorr's  Rebellion,  477-8;  gradual 
emancipation,  479. 

Rice  culture,  159,  355. 

"  Right  of  Search,"  322-3,  480. 

Robertson,  James,  239,  244-5,  247. 

Robinson,  John,  55,  59. 

Rockefeller,  John  D.,  636-7. 

Rolfe,  John,  and  tobacco  culture,  34. 

Roosevelt,  Theodore,  quoted,  236,  243- 
4  ;  and  campaign  of  1884,  594 ;  Civil 
Service  commissioner,  597  ;  in  Spanish 
War,  613,  615;  Vice  President,  619; 
President,  620;  and  Germany  in 
Venezuela,  621  and  note  ;  new  Monroe 
Doctrine,  622;  and  Panama  Canal, 
622-4  ;  and  arbitration  treaties,  624  ; 
and  coal  strike  of  1902,  649-50; 
and  the  courts,  652-3;  story  to  the 
presidency,  672 ;  reelection  in  1904, 
672 ;  and  progressive  movement, 
672-4;  and  the  Trusts,  673-4;  and 
Taft,  674,  677 ;  see  Elections  of  1912, 
and  1916. 

Rough  Riders,  Roosevelt's,  613. 

Rumsey,  James,  and  the  steamboat, 
369. 

Rural  credit  law,  682. 


30 


INDEX 


Russia,   Revolution  in,   717,   719 ;    and 

the  Bolshevists,  743-7. 
Russell,  Charles  Edward,  662,  716. 
Russell,  Lord  John,  551-2. 

Saar   valley,    and   the   German   Treaty, 

739. 

St.  Louis,  423. 
Salem,  62,  63,  65,  93,  150. 
Saltonstall,    Sir   Richard,    and   religious 

freedom,  97. 
San  Domingo,  622. 
San  Jacinto,  battle  of,  490. 
San  Juan  Hill,  613. 
Sandys,  Sir  Edwin,  30-2,  and  note,  33, 

34-6,  51. 
Santa  Anna,  490. 
Santiago,  battle  of,  614. 
Schurz,  Carl,  496,  note,  594. 
Scotch-Irish,  133-136. 
Scott,  Winfield,  493,  505,  528. 
Seminoles,  5;    and  Seminole  War,  469 

and  note. 
Separatists,    in    religion,    Left    wing    of 

Puritanism,  49  ;    Scrooby  Separatists, 

see  Pilgrim  Fathers. 
Servants  (Indentured,  etc.),  19;  in  early 

Mass.,  65  and  note,  67,  68  ;  in  colonial 

life,  157-8,  186. 
Sevier,  John,  239,  241. 
Seward,    William    H.,    502,    503,    511, 

523. 
Shantung,  and  the  award  to  Japan,  737, 

741. 

Shays'  Rebellion,  267-8. 
Shelbourne  (Lord),  183,  233. 
Sheridan,  "  Phil,  "  540. 
Sherman,  John,  638  and  note,  640-1. 
Sherman,  Roger,  277,  282,  283. 
Sherman,  W.  T.,  537,  539,  540. 
Sherman  Act  (silver) ,  606. 
Sherman     Anti-Trust     Act,     638.     See 

Clayton  Act. 
Shiloh,  battle  of,  537. 
Sigel,  Franz,  496. 
Silver,  605  ;   see  Free  Silver. 
Simms,  William  Gilmore,  444. 
Sinclair,  Upton,  662,  716. 
"  Single  Tax,  "  the,  662-3. 
Slaughter  House  Cases,  564. 
Slavery    (Negro),    colonial,   156-7,    158, 

159;'  Jefferson's  attempts  to    exclude 

from  Territories,  252 ;    exclusion  from 

Northwest,    255;     and    the    Federal 

Convention,  287-8  ;  and  Washington's 

administration,   312 ;     Fugitive   Slave 


law  of  1793,  313-4;  in  1830,  422; 
review  to  1844,  476  ff. ;  and  Missouri 
Compromise,  482 ;  Slave  Power  ag 
gressive  after  1830,  482  ff. ;  and  the 
Abolitionists,  494-6 ;  attacks  free 
speech,  486-8;  and  political  aboli 
tionists,  488-9;  and  Texas,  490-2; 
and  Mexican  War,  493-4 ;  and  de 
mand  for  Cuba,  494-5 ;  struggle  to 
control  territory  acquired  from 
Mexico,  496  ff. ;  squatter  sovereignty 
doctrine,  497 ;  and  Compromise  of 
1850,  499-502;  Fugitive  Slave  law, 
501-2,  503-5 ;  and  election  of  1852, 
505 ;  and  Kansas-Nebraska  Bill, 
506-8;  and  Homestead  Bill,  514; 
and  John  Brown,  515  ;  Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin,  515 ;  and  industrial  retard 
ation,  520-2;  and  the  White  race, 
521-2;  and  the  Civil  War,  529,  540 
and  note,  546-9 ;  Thirteenth  amend 
ment,  549.  See  Negroes. 

Smith,  Adam,  138,  181. 

Smith,  Captain  John,  27-28. 

Smith,  Sydney,  424. 

Smith-Lever  Agricultural  Education  Act, 
680,  682. 

Smithsonian  Institution,  444. 

Smuts,  Jan,  and  the  German  Treaty, 
742. 

Socialism,  660-663. 

Sons  of  Liberty,  191. 

"South,"  the,  163-4;  in  1830,  421; 
in  1860,  520-522 ;  see  Civil  War. 

South  Carolina,  see  Carolinas;  and 
election  of  presidential  electors  by 
legislature,  455 ;  and  nullification, 
465-9  ;  secession,  526. 

South  Dakota,  581. 

Southampton  (Earl),  and  London  Com 
pany,  35-6. 

Spain,  in  America,  6,  7-9  ;  and  Armada, 
9 ;  and  Virginia,  14,  27 ;  colonial 
navigation  acts,  108-9  ;  and  American 
Revolution,  229  and  note;  and 
navigation  of  Mississippi,  246 ;  and 
settlement  of  West,  247 ;  and  Pinck- 
ney  treaty,  327 ;  and  Louisiana 
Purchase,  371  and  note ;  and  the 
Floridas,  374-7 ;  Spanish  American 
Republics  after  1808,  375  ff. ;  Spanish- 
American  War,  612—6. 

Sparks,  Jared,  444. 

Squatter  sovereignty,  497,  498,  501. 

Stamp  Act  of  1775,  174-5,  188-92. 

Stamp  Act  Congress,  189-90. 


INDEX 


31 


Standard  Oil  Company,  636;    and  the 

"  trust,  "  637-8. 
Stanton,  Elizabeth  Cady,  669. 
Star-route  scandal,  593. 
Star-spangled  Banner,  the,  385-6. 
State  Universities,  256-7. 
Steamboat,  the.  368-9,  39-6. 
Stephens,  Alexander  H.,  527. 
Stevens,  Thaddeus,  559-60. 
Stoughton,  Israel,  and  free  speech,  87. 
Stowe,  Harriet  Beecher,  515. 
Strikes,    before    1840,    434-5;    439-40; 

of  1877,  648 ;    Pullman  strike  of  '94, 

648;     coal    strike    of    1902,    649-50; 

and   the   public,    651 ;     and   violence, 

651-2.     See  Labor. 
Stuart,  Gilbert,  349. 
Stuart,  "  Jeb,"  540. 
Submarine  warfare  (German),  709-11. 
Sugar  Act,  of  1733,  139 ;  of  1764,  174. 
Sumner,  Charles,  505,  559-560. 
Sumter,  Fort,  531. 

Supreme  Court,  see  Federal  Judiciary. 
Survey   Ordinance  of   1785,   see  Public 

Domain. 

Taft,  WiUiam  Howard,  and  the  Arizona 
recall,  668;  presidency  of,  674-7; 
and  the  Payne- Aldrich  tariff,  675-6; 
and  the  Insurgents,  676-7 ;  and  elec 
tion  of  1912,  677,  679  ;  and  War  Labor 
Board,  750. 

Talleyrand,  371,  382. 

Tammany,  597,  643. 

Taney,  Roger  B.,  510. 

Tariffs,  in  1789,  308;  of  1791,  311; 
question  of  protection  after  War  of 
1812,  411-2;  tariff  of  1816,  412; 
of  1824,  414;  of  1828,  414-5;  and 
nullification  sentiment,  465,  469 ;  of 
1832,  467  ;  compromise  of  1833,  468  ; 
and  Tyler's  veto,  476 ;  tariff  of  1842, 
476;  and  Greeley's  doctrine  of  pro 
tection  to  labor,  476 ;  legislation  to 
the  Civil  War,  476-7 ;  "  war  tariffs," 
543  ;  and  Cleveland,  595 ;  failure  of 
Mills'  Bill,  595  ;  and  campaign  of  1892, 
599;  Wilson  tariff,  599;  McKinley 
tariff,  597-8;  Dingley  tariff,  600-1; 
and  the  Trusts,  601 ;  Payne-Aldrich, 
675-6  ;  Underwood,  679. 

Taylor,  Zachary,  493,  499. 

Tecumthe,  394-5. 

Temperance  movement, -the  early,  449. 

Tennessee,  233,  314.  See  Watauga,  and 
Frankland. 


Territorial  growth,  1660-1690,  107  ;  new 
frontiers  to  Revolution,  133-5 ;  in 
1783,  233-4;  Louisiana  Purchase, 
370  ff. ;  the  Floridas,  137,  374-7; 
Texas,  377-8;  490-2;  and  Mexican 
War,  493-4  ;  Gadsden  Purchase,  494  ; 
Oregon,  which  see  ;  meaning  of  growth 
in  American  history,  see  West  and 
Frontier:  maps,  after  106,  232,  236, 
239,  250,  258,  340,  342,  343,  372,  376, 
379. 

"  Territory,"  as  a  political  division, 
250-1 ;  see  Northwest  Ordinance. 

Texas,  and  Louisiana  Purchase  and 
West  Florida,  377-8;  independence, 
490  ;  annexation,  490-2  ;  and  Mexican 
War,  493,  494;  and.  secession,  527 
note. 

Thames,  battle  of,  384,  395. 

Thomas,  George  H.,  537,  539. 

Tilden,  Samuel  J.,  571-2,  643. 

Tippecanoe,  395. 

"  Tippecanoe  and  Tyler  Too,"  475. 

Tobacco  industry,  7,  34 ;  and  King 
James,  34-5  ;  and  medium  of  exchange, 
124. 

Tocqueville,  Alexis  de,  quoted,  12,  271. 

Toombs,  Robert,  and  disunion,  499,  526. 

Tory,  see  Loyalist. 

Toussaint,  L'Ouverture,  371. 

Townley,  Arthur  C.,  659. 

Townshend,  Charles,  192-3. 

Treaty  of  1783,  233-5. 

Trenton,  battle  of,  217. 

Trevett  vs.  Weeden,  266-7. 

Triple  Alliance,  the,  and  World  War, 
687-8. 

Triple  Entente,  688-9. 

Trotsky,  Leon,  718,  743-7. 

"  Trust,"  ther  industrial,  and  the  tariff, 
601 ;  discussed,  637  ff. ;  and  Sherman 
Act,  638;  rapid  growth  after  1899, 
638-9 ;  State  regulation  fails,  639 ; 
and  14th  amendment,  640 ;  see  Clay 
ton  Act. 

Turner,  Frederick  J.,  quoted  on  the 
West,  259,  399-400. 

Tweed  Ring,  643. 

Tyler,  John,  475-7,  491-2. 

Tyler,  Moses  Coit,  quoted,  175,  199. 

Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,  515. 

"  Underground  Railroad,"  505. 

Union  Pacific,  545  ;  and  Credit  Mobilier, 

569-571. 
Union  party,  the,  of  1860,  523-5. 


INDEX 


Unitarianism,  445-6. 

"  United  States,"  meaning  in  territorial 
sense  (territory  of,  or  territory  be 
longing  to),  373-4. 

Universalist  church,  446. 

Uren,  William,  664,  667. 

Utah,  581. 

Valley  Forge,  225,  228. 

Van  Buren,  Martin,  472,  491-2,  498. 

Vane,  Sir  Harry,  95. 

Venezuela,  611-2,  621  and  note. 

Vergennes,  169,  234,  235. 

Vermont,  166,.  223;  and  democracy, 
223,  314 ;  first  State  to  abolish  slavery 
directly,  479. 

Veto,  executive,  see  Jackson,  and  Cleve 
land  ;  origin  of  American  form  in  Rev 
olutionary  State  constitutions,  221 ; 
"  pocket  veto,"  458. 

Vicksburg,  siege  of,  537. 

Vincennes,  233,  236. 

Virginia,  attempts  to  colonize,  14  ff. ; 
motives,  12-21 ;  difficulties,  15-16 ; 
charter,  17-18;  lure  of  riches,  20-21 ; 
under  London  Company,  22  ff . ;  no 
self  government  to  1619,  23-30;  early 
history,  see  Jamestown ;  plantation 
system,  24-6 ;  industry  in  common, 
26  ;  and  John  Smith,  27-8  ;  and  Dela 
ware,  28 ;  charters  of  1609  and  1612, 
28-9;  rule  of  Dale,  29-30;  and 
liberalized  London  Company  of  1618, 
30  ff . ;  first  Representative  Assembly, 
31-2;  Charter  of  1618  from  Com 
pany,  33;  and  tobacco,  34;  royal 
province,  37  ff. ;  Assembly  saved, 
38—9 ;  taxation  and  representation, 
38,  40;  "mutiny  of  1635,"  40;  en 
larged  self-government  under  Com 
monwealth,  40-1  ;  and  the  Restora 
tion,  41,  119  ff. ;  the  Cavaliers,  119 
ff. ;  reaction  in  politics,  120-1  ;  and 
navigation  acts,  121  ;  Bacon's  Re 
bellion,  121-3 ;  aristocratic  local 
government,  121,  125;  contrasted 
with  New  England,  126-7;  and 
American  Revolution,  188-9,  190-1, 
193-4,  202-4,  and  passim;  evolu 
tion  from  colony  to  commonwealth, 
202-4,  210-5;  Bill  of  Rights,  214-5; 
conquest  of  Northwest,  238  ff . ;  claims 
and  cessions  of  Northwest,  251 ; 
Military  Reserve,  251-2;  and  Fed 
eral  Convention,  275  ;  and  Jefferson's 
reforms  during  Revolution,  354 ; 


franchise,  453  ;    and  secession,  532-3 

and  note. 

Virginia  Bill  of  Rights,  214-5. 
Virginia  Resolutions  of  1798,  329. 
Virginia,  The,  535-6. 
Virginia,  University  of,  355. 

Wade,  "  Ben,"  and  Reconstruction,  558. 

Walker,  Francis  A.,  quoted,  264,  351-2. 

War  of  1812,  381-5 ;  and  New  England 
treason,  386-91 ;  results,  393  ff. 

Ward,  Nathaniel,  86. 

Washington,  George,  and  Pontiac's  War, 
173;  and  English  debts,  190,  note; 
and  Revolution,  203-4,  209,  211,  217, 
225,  226,  228,  232 ;  the  one  indispen 
sable  man,  226;  Newburgh  Address, 
232;  on  the  anarchy  of  the  "Critical 
Period,"  266;  and  danger  of  losing 
the  West,  272  and  note ;  and  Federal 
Convention,  273,  274,  275;  presi 
dency,  300  ff. ;  and  Congress,  301 ; 
and  titles,  301-2;  and  Senate,  304; 
and  Cabinet,  304-5 ;  pardons  leaders 
of  Whisky  Rebellion,  311  ;  and  implied 
powers,  312;  reelection,  318;  refuses 
third  term,  318  (no  constitutional 
significance,  363)  ;  and  neutrality 
proclamation,  321 ;  and  Jay  Treaty, 
322-5  ;  refuses  candidacy  in  1800,  331 ; 
on  disappearance  of  free  land,  351. 

Washington,  Capital,  310. 

Washington,  State  of,  581. 

Watauga,  238-241 ;  Articles  of  Asso 
ciation,  241 ;  and  Cumberland  settle 
ments,  244;  and  "  Frankland,"  245. 

Watertown,  65 ;  and  taxation  without 
representation,  77,  97 ;  and  establish 
ment  of  town  government,  88  5  and 
migration  to  Conn.,  101-2. 

"  Watered  stock,"  see  Railroads. 

Wayne,  Anthony,  258. 

"  We  the  People,"  297-299. 

Weaver,  James  B.,  606. 

Webster,  Daniel,  and  "  We  the  People," 
299  ;  and  tariff,  414-5  ;  and  franchise, 
453;  leader  in  1830,  463-4;  and 
Jackson,  465 ;  debate  with  Hayne, 
466-7  (and  299)  ;  Ashburton  treaty, 
477;  and  Compromise  of  1850,  501-2. 

Webster,  Noah,  444. 

Webster-Ashburton  Treaty,  477. 

West,  the,  in  1690-1760,  133-6; 
Contrast  with  East,  165-7;  griev 
ances,  184-5 ;  and  the  Revolution, 
185 ;  "  Second  "  West,  acquired  in 


INDEX 


33 


Revolution.  237  ff. ;  Watauga,  238- 
41 ;  early  Kentucky  and  Tennessee, 
40-8 ;  separatist  tendencies  and 
causes,  246-7 ;  State  claims  and 
cessions,  250-2 ;  plan  for  "  Terri 
tories,"  250-1  ;  meaning  of  frontier 
in  American  history,  259  and  esp. 
337  ff. ;  growth  from  1800  to  1810, 
366-8;  the  "Third"  West  after 
1815,  393  ff. ;  extinction  of  Indian 
titles,  393-4;  and  ruin  of  the  East, 
394;  roads  new  and  old,  398-400;  and 
internal  improvements,  398  ff. ;  and 
canals,  401-2 ;  unparalleled  growth 
from  1815  to  1830,  402-4;  character 
in  1830,  422  ff . ;  democracy  and 
optimism,  424-5. 

West,  Benjamin,  349. 

West  Florida,  374  and  map ;  annexation 
of  part,  375,  377. 

West  Virginia,  532  and  note. 

Western  Reserve  (Connecticut's),  251-2. 

Weymouth,  Captain  George,  2,  3. 

Wheelwright,  John,  95-6. 

Whigs,  English,  in  American  Revolution, 
183-4,  233. 

Whig  party  (in  America),  465,  475,  498, 
523. 

Whisky  Rebellion,  311-2. 

White,  Andrew  D.,  505,  note,  544-5, 
589,  594. 

White  Plains,  battle  of,  217. 

Whitfield,  George,  151. 

Whitney,  Eli,  345. 

Whittier,  John  G.,  444,  485 ;  on  Webster, 
501. 

Wiggles  worth's  Day  of  Doom,  148-9. 

Wilderness,  battle  of,  540. 

Wilderness  Road,  244,  399. 

William  and  Mary,  152. 

Williams,  Roger,  92-4 ;  and  religious 
freedom,  98-101. 

Wilmot  Proviso,  497. 

Wilson,  James,  274. 

Wilson,  Woodrow,  quoted  on  aristo 
cratic  purpose  of  Federal  Convention, 
276 ;  restores  personal  address  to 
Congress,  358 ;  quoted  on  South's 
devotion  to  the  Lost  Cause,  546 ; 
on  Reconstruction  blunders,  562 ; 
and  Philippine  self-government,  619 ; 
fight  against  Trusts  in  New  Jersey, 
639,  665;  campaign  of  1912,  678-9; 
first  administration  progressive  gains, 


679-81;  and  Mexico,  682-3;  and 
World  War,  which  see ;  reelection, 
711-2;  proposes  league  of  nations  to 
enforce  peace,  713—4 ;  war  message, 
715-6;  fourteen  points,  723-4;  at 
Versailles  Peace  Congress,  which  see, 
and  esp.  743 ;  campaign  for  League 
of  Nations,  and  physical  collapse,  756- 
7 ;  reversal  of  domestic  policies, 
755  ff. 

Winslow,  Edward,  51,  56-7,  60. 

Winthrop,  John,  64,  65,  66,  68-9,  76, 
77-80,  94. 

Wisconsin,  496 ;  and  personal  liberty 
laws,  505  and  note. 

Witchcraft  delusion,  149-50. 

Wolfe,  James,  137,  172. 

Woman  movement,  the,  and  Body  of 
Liberties,  86;  admitted  to  Oberlin, 
444 ;  first  advance,  449 ;  and  labor 
movement  (shorter  day  and  mini 
mum  wage),  652-3  ;  enfranchised,  669- 
71. 

Wood,  Leonard,  616. 

Workman's  Compensation  Acts,  655, 
681. 

World  War,  the,  causes,  684  ff . ;  Euro 
pean  alliances,  687-9  ;  and  the  Balkan 
seed  plot,  689-95;  and  Germany, 
695-701 ;  and  America,  703  ff . ;  prog 
ress  of,  703-9;  trench  warfare,  704, 
705-6 ;  and  sea  power,  and  U-boats, 
704,  709-711,  720;  American  neu 
trality,  707  ff . ;  Germany  makes 
neutrality  impossible,  709-11;  Amer 
ica  enters,  714-6;  campaigns  of 
1916-7,  717-22;  Russian  collapse, 
717  ;  American  participation,  720-1 ; 
progress  in  1918,  725-30;  see 
Peace  Congress;  cost,  731  ff . ;  and 
748 ;  and  American  organization, 
748-751. 

Writs  of  Assistance,  169-71. 

Wyatt,  Sir  Francis,  40. 

Wyoming,  581 ;  and  woman  suffrage, 
670. 

"  X.  Y.  Z.,"  326. 

Yale  University,  152,  505  note. 
Yeardley,  Sir  George,  31,  39. 
Yellow  Fever,  and  Walter  Reed,  617. 
Yorktown,  capture  of,  232. 

Zenger,  John,  and  free  speech,  143-4. 


THIS  BOOK 


SEP    27  till 


JAN  24   1 


MAR  24  I 


1934 
SEP   171934 


MAh?  30  1935 
SEP  23  1935 


1838 


MAV    9  1935 


APR  22  I960 


SE^n•ONlLL 

MAR  1  2  898 

U-C.  BERKELEY 


1Q  27930 


580189 


I 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


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